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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2016
Biographical background and musical analysis reveal a remarkable relationship between Franz Schubert’s early lieder ‘An die Geliebte’ and ‘An die Nachtigall’. In ‘An die Geliebte’, tonal ambiguity underscores the indeterminate nature of its narrative, permitting multiple coexistent and contrasting expressive meanings while favouring an ironic interpretation and an intriguing subtext. In ‘An die Nachtigall’, whose introduction and first phrase are similar to the opening of ‘An die Geliebte’, multiple expressive meanings also may be discerned, including an ironic interpretation that emerges when the song is considered in the context of its predecessor. Proceeding from a prior discussion of these lieder by Susan Youens, this essay will reveal unsuspected layers of meaning and a contextual process that unfolds in these unassuming yet engaging songs of Schubert, which uniquely converse with one another and frame an important episode in the composer’s life.
An earlier version of this essay was read at the Fiftieth Annual Conference of the Royal Music Association, held at the University of Leeds on 5 September 2014. I thank Mississippi State University’s Office of Research and Development, the Dean’s Office of its College of Education and its Department of Music for the kind support accorded me on that occasion.
1 In the middle of the twentieth century, ‘An die Geliebte’ and ‘An die Nachtigall’ were scarcely discussed in the Schubert literature. For instance, there is no mention of either lied in Erich Deutsch’s, Otto Schubert: A Documentary Biography, trans. Eric Blom (London: Dent, 1946)Google Scholar and Brown’s, Maurice J.E. Schubert: A Critical Biography (London: MacMillan, 1958)Google Scholar. However, Alfred Einstein speculated that ‘An die Nachtigall’ may be ‘the prototype of some of Hugo Wolf’s loveliest Mörike songs’; see his Schubert: A Musical Portrait (New York: Oxford University Press, 1951): 141. The fortunes of these lieder appear to have changed little by the century’s end, for there is no reference to either song in McKay’s, Elizabeth Franz Schubert: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar, Newbould’s, Brian Schubert (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar, or Gibbs’, Christopher The Life of Schubert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)Google Scholar. Nevertheless, John Reed waxes enthusiastic: ‘The best-known of the Claudius songs is “Der Tod und das Mädchen” (Death and the Maiden) D531, but perhaps the finest of them is “An die Nachtigall” (To the Nightingale) D497, which evokes a new world of subjective feeling in its forty-one bars. The song begins off-key, borrowing a device already exploited a year earlier in “An die Geliebte” (To the Beloved) D303. At bar 22, the notes begin to dance with joy, and then to yearn with passionate longing … The major/minor exchanges here are much more than a traditional device. They seem to sum up the essence of the poetic experience of life. Perhaps here, for the first time, we become aware of the Innigkeit, the subjective feeling for the fragility of life and joy, which was to sustain a century of Romantic song’. See , Reed, Schubert, rev. ed., (New York: Schirmer, 1997): 35–36 Google Scholar.
2 Some of the relative anonymity of ‘An die Geliebte’ and ‘An die Nachtigall’ might be attributed to their belated publication. Deutsch reports that ‘An die Geliebte’ appeared in 1887 within the volume, Schubert Album: book 7, edited by Max Friedlaender and published by Peters in Leipzig, and that ‘An die Nachtigall’ appeared in 1829, when it was published by Diabelli in Vienna as the composer’s Op. 98, No. 1; see The Schubert Thematic Catalogue, by Otto Erich Deutsch in collaboration with Donald Wakeling (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1995 [1951]): 134 and 221. For more, see Brown, Maurice, ‘The Posthumous Publication of the Songs’, in his Essays on Schubert (London: Macmillan, 1966), 286 Google Scholar and 272.
3 Youens, Susan, ‘Franz Schubert: The Prince of Song’, in German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Rufus Hallmark (New York: Schirmer Books, 1996): 52–54 Google Scholar.
4 Youens, , ‘Franz Schubert: The Prince of Song’, 53 Google Scholar.
5 Youens, , ‘Franz Schubert: The Prince of Song’, 53 Google Scholar, 55. Robert Hatten describes Schubert’s treatment of his chosen texts as a dominative process in which lyric poems ‘inevitably concede something of their music to an appropriation by, and not merely a translation into, another artistic medium’; see Hatten, , ‘A Surfeit of Musics: What Goethe’s Lyrics Concede when Set to Schubert’s Music’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review 5/4 (2008): 7 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Lorraine Byrne Bodley’s article, ‘In Pursuit of a Single Flame? On Schubert’s Settings of Goethe’s Poems’, elsewhere in this volume, which responds to Hatten’s earlier essay.
6 Schubert’s best-known instances of self-borrowings, including those involving the ‘Trout’ quintet, the ‘Death and the Maiden’ quartet and the ‘Wanderer’ fantasy, evoke and are informed by the songs on which they are based. However, it appears that the two lieder under consideration here represent a similar case within the composer’s vocal literature, where, in general, the products were not intended to replace their predecessors. In contrast, we should recall Schubert’s ‘Erlkönig’, which was written in 1815 and then revised three more times before it was published as his Op. 1 in 1821, the fourth version (D. 328) being the one that usually represents his masterpiece today. Thus, with ‘An die Geliebte’ and ‘An die Nachtigall’, it may be more appropriate to speak of ‘self-borrowing’ than ‘revision’, since both songs seem finished, distinct and successful – and both still exist.
7 Stoll had been a journalist and theatre director in Vienna. Shortly after his death in 1815, Schubert set three of Stoll’s poems, including ‘Lambertine’ (D. 301) and ‘Labetrank der Liebe’ (D. 302), as well as ‘An die Geliebte’ (D. 303).
8 Youens, , ‘Franz Schubert: The Prince of Song’, 53 Google Scholar.
9 Of ‘An die Geliebte’, John Reed observes: ‘The autograph, now in ÖNB [Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna], is a first draft, dated 15 October 1815. There is a dated copy in the Witteczek-Spaun collection (Vienna, GdM [Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna]). The song was first published by Peters of Leipzig in 1887. The song was written, along with seven others, on the name day of Schubert’s first love, Therese Grob, so there is little doubt about the identity of ‘die Geliebte’. The curious thing is that a year later, in November 1816, he used the same musical idea as the basis for a much greater song, his setting of the Claudius poem ‘An die Nachtigall’ (D497). This too is a love song, and more personal in tone than ‘An die Geliebte’. A comparison of the two songs tells us more about the development of Schubert’s genius between October 1815 and November 1816 than about his love-life. For whereas ‘An die Geliebte’ is very singable, the Claudius song is a masterpiece, which uses the off-key opening to much better purpose’; see Reed, John, The Schubert Song Companion (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997): 34 Google Scholar.
10 Graham Johnson, taking note of John Reed’s observation that ‘An die Geliebte’ was one of eight songs composed on Grob’s name-day, concurs but cautions: ‘If he [Schubert] was inspired to a large creative outburst in her honour there is little doubt that it is she who is “die Geliebte”. On the other hand, the link with the name-day may simply be a coincidence: none of these songs was included in the Therese Grob songbook of the following year’. See Johnson, , Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs, I (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014): 168 Google Scholar.
11 Deutsch reports that Schubert confessed his love for Therese in a long letter to his friend Anton Holzapfel early in 1815 – which was lost – and that Holzapfel, in a reply – also lost – attempted to dissuade Schubert, speculating: ‘He [Schubert] does not seem to have given up hope of marrying Therese until three years later, and in 1820 she married the master baker Johann Bergman’. Deutsch, Schubert: A Documentary Biography, 45–6. For more of Holzapfel’s account, see Deutsch, Otto Erich, Schubert: Memoirs by His Friends, trans. Rosamund Ley and John Nowell (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1958): 60–62 Google Scholar.
Deutsch adds that Schubert later discussed Therese with Anselm Hüttenbrenner, concluding: ‘If Hüttenbrenner’s recollections of 1858 (Vienna City Library), doubtless wrong in some details, are correct in this respect, Schubert was unable ever to forget Therese Grob, and finally renounced marriage on her account. The reason why she did not become his wife seems to have lain in his hopeless material circumstances at that time’; see Deutsch, , Schubert: A Documentary Biography, 46 Google Scholar.
12 Schubert composed a ‘Cantata for his Father’s Name-Day’ in 1813, and Deutsch asserted that at that time, name days were celebrated more than birthdays in the Catholic countries of central Europe; see Deutsch, , Schubert: A Documentary Biography, 38 Google Scholar. Thus, there is a clear precedent for the motivation of Schubert’s creativity by a loved one’s name day. In the calendar of saints, 15 October is dedicated to St Teresa of Ávila, and it was celebrated as the name day of Therese Grob.
13 Rita Steblin has offered evidence to suggest that ‘although Schubert confessed his love for Therese to several close friends, Therese herself may have been unaware of the extent of this love until after the appearance of Kreißle’s biography in 1865’; see Steblin, , ‘Schubert’s Beloved Singer Therese Grob: New Documentary Research’, Schubert durch die Brille 29 (2002): 55–100 Google Scholar, specifically p. 81. I thank Christopher Gibbs regarding this resource.
14 Deutsch, Schubert: A Documentary Biography, 43–4.
15 Steblin, Rita, ‘Franz Schubert und das Ehe-Consens Gesetz von 1815’, Schubert durch die Brille 9 (1992): 32–42 Google Scholar.
16 The controversy regarding Schubert’s sexuality need not be revived here, nor will it be settled here, but some readers may wish to consider some of its exchanges as context for the present essay. See: Solomon, Maynard, ‘Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini’, 19th Century Music 12/3 (1989): 193–206 Google Scholar; Steblin, Rita, ‘The Peacock’s Tale: Schubert’s Sexuality Reconsidered’, 19th Century Music 17/1 (1993): 5–33 Google Scholar; Solomon, Maynard, ‘Schubert: Some Consequences of Nostalgia’, 19th Century Music 17/1 (1993): 34–46 Google Scholar; Agawu, Victor Kofi, ‘Schubert’s Sexuality: A Prescription for Analysis?’, 19th Century Music 17/1 (1993): 79–82 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McClary, Susan, ‘Music and Sexuality: On the Steblin/Solomon Debate’, 19th Century Music 17/1 (1993): 83–88 Google Scholar; Webster, James, ‘Music, Pathology, Sexuality, Beethoven, Schubert’, 19th Century Music 17/1 (1993): 89–93 Google Scholar. More recently, Steblin’s, Rita article, ‘In Defense of Scholarship and Archival Research: Why Schubert’s Brothers were Allowed to Marry’, Current Musicology 62 (1998): 7–17 Google Scholar, directly and convincingly answers a question posed earlier by Maynard Solomon in his article, ‘Schubert: Some Consequences of Nostalgia’, while her chapter, ‘Schubert’s Problematic Relationship with Johann Mayrhofer: New Documentary Evidence’, in Essays on Music and Culture in Honor of Herbert Kellman, ed. Barbara Haggh (Turnhout, BE: Brepols, 2001), 465–95, addresses presumptions and misconceptions regarding Schubert’s friend. I thank an anonymous peer reviewer of this essay for the encouragement to include these references here, as well as other kind suggestions for improvement.
17 During 1816, after the composition of ‘An die Geliebte’ and before the composition of ‘An die Nachtigall’, Schubert assembled a set of 17 songs, known today as the ‘Therese Grob Songbook’, which he gave to his friend Heinrich Grob (1800–1855), who was Therese’s younger brother and a cellist with whom Schubert collaborated. For an introduction to this music, see Brown, Maurice J.E., ‘The Therese Grob Collection of Songs by Schubert’ Music and Letters 49/2 (1968): 122–134 Google Scholar. Rita Steblin concludes her recent essay on Therese with these words: ‘I still think that this collection was intended indirectly for Therese … Many of Schubert’s friends courted and married each other’s sisters, a common practice in the Biedermeier era. Perhaps Schubert was hoping to win Therese’s heart by forming a closer friendship with her brother. Thus, he may have given these songs to Heinrich, perhaps assuming that they would end up in Therese’s possession’. See Steblin, ‘Schubert’s Beloved Singer Therese Grob: New Documentary Research’, 99. If this album was meant to sustain Schubert’s presence in the Grob home when he was not there, the earlier ‘An die Geliebte’ may have been intended as a more pointed and purposeful message.
18 ‘An die Geliebte’ belongs to an extraordinarily productive period in Schubert’s life, for 142 songs issued from his pen in 1815, a year often referred to as his annus mirabilis, see Johnson, Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs, III, p. 819. Among those composed that year were ‘Heidenröslein’, ‘Erlkönig’ and ‘Erster Verlust’ (discussed by Lorraine Byrne Bodley elsewhere in this volume).
19 An anonymous reader of this paper pointed out that C major and A minor are briefly tonicized by harmonic sequences that descend by thirds, which are most evident in the bass (C/E–G7/D–C, and Am/C–E7/B–Am, respectively) of the opening bars. The second of these reinforces the suggestion of C as the controlling tonality of the opening of the song, representing its relative minor. Other juxtapositions of the C major/A minor pairing appear in bars 10–11 and 19–20.
20 The pitch sequence G4–F♮4–E4–D4 in bars 26–28 recall the pitches G5–F♮5–E5–D5 heard earlier on the downbeats of bars 1–4, and thus prepare for their imminent return in the second strophe.
21 Robert Hatten discusses a more elaborate tonal vacillation involving F minor and A-flat major in Schubert’s ‘Erster Verlust’ (D. 226, 1815), composed over a year before ‘An die Nachtigall’. See Hatten, ‘A Surfeit of Musics’, 15–16. I thank Lorraine Byrne Bodley for reminding me of this passage and reference.
22 Contemporary listeners acquainted with the richly allusive harmony of Fryderyk Chopin, Robert Schumann and Gabriel Fauré, as well as the great range of twentieth-century idioms, may not find Schubert’s ‘An die Geliebte’ disquieting, but in 1815, and particularly within lieder composition at the time, clear tonal orientation at the outset of a song was the norm. Of course, the anticipation elicited by Schubert’s setting is not without precedent in the vocal domain, for it is quite typical of operatic recitatives, which commonly facilitate key changes and effect shifts of focus, but here it calls attention to a composer seeking to expand the nature of a genre. Indeed, what occurs in Schubert’s ‘An die Geliebte’ is rather unconventional with respect to the era’s lieder, as a comparison with Ludwig van Beethoven’s setting of the very same text – his own ‘An die Geliebte’, WoO 140 (1811) – demonstrates. In this regard, Graham Johnson puts it well: ‘In this instance, it is clear that Schubert was not in the slightest influenced by his great contemporary’; see Johnson, Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs, I, 169.
23 For more on the concept of precursive prolongation, see Sobaskie, James William, ‘Tonal Implication and the Gestural Dialectic in Schubert’s A Minor String Quartet’, in Schubert the Progressive, ed. Brian Newbould (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000): 56–62 Google Scholar; Sobaskie, James William, ‘The ‘Problem’ of Schubert’s String Quintet’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review 2/1 (2005): 84–86 Google Scholar; and especially Sobaskie, James William, ‘Precursive Prolongation in the Préludes of Chopin’, Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland 3 (2007–08): 25–61 Google Scholar (www.music.ucc.ie/jsmi/index.php/jsmi/issue/view/5), where the concept’s theoretical bases are established and its analytic utility is demonstrated. Precursive prolongations include melodic prefixes like appoggiaturas, and harmonic prefixes like applied dominants, but also extended contrapuntal-harmonic passages and pieces – like Schubert’s song – which sometimes are described as auxiliary cadences. However, the concept of precursive prolongation avoids inherent weaknesses within the auxiliary cadence idea, while remaining fully congruent with Schenkerian theory. It does so by drawing upon the principles of structural levels, voice leading and diminution, and by emphasizing the obvious prefixial and anticipatory nature of these structures, rather than regarding them as instances of harmonic patterns that have been hypothetically ‘transferred’ from higher structural levels and ‘abbreviated’; see Sobaskie, ‘Precursive Prolongation in the Préludes of Chopin’, 36–9, for a formal definition of this concept.
24 Several other songs composed around the time of ‘An die Geliebte’ suggest that Schubert may have been fascinated with the expressive potential of precursive prolongations. For instance, his ‘Nähe des Geliebten’ (‘Nearness of the beloved’; 1815; D. 162) initially alludes to E-flat minor and delays confirmation of tonic G-flat major until the end of the second phrase. Two of the songs from the ‘Therese Grob Songbook’, Klage (‘Lament’; 1816; D. 415) and ‘Edone’ (‘Edone’; 1816; D. 445) reverse that pattern; in the former, F major appears to hold sway for 19 bars before it is supplanted by D minor in the last ten bars, while in the latter, E-flat major and C minor appear to alternate for the first 31 bars until C minor finally wrests control in the last six. Yet perhaps the most charming instance from this era must be ‘An den Schlaf’ (‘To sleep’; 1816; D. 447), where first-inversion tonic harmonies repeatedly give way to dominants, which, in turn, continuously evade a satisfying resolution to tonic A major until the very last sung word – ‘Glück’ – to add poignancy to the plea of one asking for sleep to come and assuage his lost happiness. All may be interpreted as precursive prolongations, and, taken together, seem to reveal an artist interested in eliciting and manipulating expectation for engaging and expressive effects. Schubert’s ‘Dass sie hier gewesen’ (‘That she has been here’; 1823?; D. 775), perhaps the most remarkable instance of precursive prolongation in his œuvre, represents a continuation and a culmination of this pursuit of poetic allusiveness within his musical fabrics.
25 The voice’s D5 prolongs the effect of the preceding F5, which is contextually superior.
26 Schubert’s appropriations often intensify, enrich and sometimes even swerve from his poet’s original expressive message. However, in a recent essay, Susan Youens has illuminated a remarkable instance in Schubert’s ‘Der Einsame’ (1825; D. 800) where ‘a composer conducts a quarrel with a poet’s ideas from within his or her musical setting’; see Youens, Susan, ‘The Grit in the Oyster, or How to Quarrel with a Poet’, in Words and Notes in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Phyllis Weliver and Katherine Ellis (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013): 206 Google Scholar. In this light, Schubert’s nuanced setting of ‘An die Geliebte’ may be seen as a specimen of persuasion, albeit more seductive than argumentative.
27 See Johnson, Graham, Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs, I, 168 Google Scholar.
28 Graham Johnson observes: ‘This [‘An die Nachtigall’] is one of the finest songs of 1816: brevity, classical poise and restraint are suffused with achingly beautiful intimations of the Romantic era. The song opens in unconventional fashion in the subdominant, C major. This had already been tried by Schubert a year before in the Stoll setting ‘An die Geliebte’ D303; indeed Schubert liked the opening of that song so much that here he unashamedly borrows from himself, something that was far from his usual practice’. See Johnson, Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs, I, 180. While the notation of these two opening passages is not exactly the same, and both songs remained unpublished until after the composer’s death, one senses – particularly given the characters of the two songs, as well as Schubert’s ‘usual practice’, as Johnson puts it – that ‘An die Nachtigall’ does not so much rescue material from ‘An die Geliebte’ but revisits it from a new perspective.
29 Schubert set 14 poems of Matthias Claudius (1740–1815) between 1815 and 1817, perhaps the best known of which is ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’ (1817; D. 531). Reed reports that Claudius’s poem ‘An die Nachtigall’ dates from 1771; see Reed, The Schubert Song Companion, 37. Regarding the fifth line of the lied, Graham Johnson indicates that the poet’s original text read ‘Nachtigall, Nachtigall, ach’; Schubert’s insertion of the first ‘Ach’ certainly adds rhythmic balance as it extends the musical phrase, but also intensifies its expression of pain. See Johnson, Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs, I, p. 180, fn1.
30 Schubert composed another song by the name of ‘An die Nachtigall’, set to the words of Ludwig Hölty, on 22 May 1815, and like the lied under consideration here, the text of his D. 196 includes a plea to the nightingale for quiet. However, unlike it, the earlier song manifests no emergent narrative or shifting interiority, but focuses on the memory of lost love elicited by the bird’s sweet song that frustrates sleep.
31 Youens, , ‘Franz Schubert: The Prince of Song’, 54 Google Scholar. ‘Amor’ is a poetic reference to and alternative name for Eros, the male Greek god of love.
32 The association of the nightingale with tragedy and transformation may be traced to the story of Philomela and Procne, which is told in Book VI of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE), yet may originate in a much earlier lost play of Sophocles dating from the fifth century BCE. Philomela, after violation and mutilation by her sister’s husband, King Tereus, gains a measure of revenge with Procne’s help and escapes the king’s wrath through prayer to the gods, who change her into a nightingale. Since antiquity, the nightingale has appeared frequently in Western literature, its song linked to beauty as well as fatality, as John Keats’ ‘Ode to a nightingale’ (1819) and Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ (1888) demonstrate.
33 Youens, , ‘Franz Schubert: The Prince of Song’, 54 Google Scholar.
34 Youens, , ‘Franz Schubert: The Prince of Song’, 54–55 Google Scholar.
35 Susan Wollenberg reviews the literature on modal interchange and offers new insights on the technique in her book, Schubert’s Fingerprints: Studies in the Instrumental Works (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011): 15–46.
36 The last six of these invert the minor seventh interval to a major second.
37 Robert Hatten describes cadential six-four sonorities like this as ‘arrival six-fours’; see Hatten, Robert S., Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994): 15 Google Scholar and 97, as well as Robert S. Hatten, Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004): 24–8. Following the preceding span in the parallel minor, the augmented-sixth chord of bar 35 initiates a minor-to-major transformation, not unlike that of a Picardy third, and creates the effect of a breakthrough, an arrival in a fresh, new state of being, when the six-four sonority sounds in bar 36. Context is everything in a brief lied like this, and such familiar voice-leading events, which otherwise might be overlooked, can convey a lot – here, in context, this construction communicates impressions of transformation and transcendence. Of the instance in ‘An die Nachtigall’, Robert Hatten told me: ‘This is an example in which the rhetorical effect of arrival and the syntactic effect of a cadential 6/4 resolving immediately to V are in balance, and thus the arrival 6/4 effect is likely to be missed by theories of tonal syntax alone’.
38 My research into Schubert’s late music reveals a pursuit of coherence within and among separate pieces via contextual musical processes. See Sobaskie, ‘Tonal Implication and the Gestural Dialectic’; Sobaskie, James William, ‘A Balance Struck: Gesture, Form, and Drama in Schubert’s E flat Major Piano Trio’, in Le style instrumental de Schubert: sources, analyse, contexte, évolution, ed. Xavier Hascher (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2007): 115–146 Google Scholar; Sobaskie, James William, ‘The “Problem” of Schubert’s String Quintet’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review 2/1 (2005): 57–92 Google Scholar. ‘An die Geliebte’ and ‘An die Nachtigall’ would seem to suggest that Schubert’s quest for binding separate pieces certainly started earlier.
39 See Deutsch, , Schubert: A Documentary Biography, 52–6, 58–60 Google Scholar, 66–70. Laibach, now called Ljubljana, was part of the Austrian empire in Schubert’s day; today it is the capitol of Slovenia.
40 It appears that the decision to award the position to another candidate had been taken on 20 August 1816 and that applicants were to be informed by 7 September by the Civic Guard of Vienna. A diary entry by Johann Mayrhofer on 7 September that reads: ‘Schubert and several friends are to come to me to-day, and the fogs of the present time, which is somewhat leaden, shall be lifted by his melodies’, suggests the composer already knew he did not get the job. See Deutsch, , Schubert: A Documentary Biography, 69–70 Google Scholar.
41 Full of random reflections, Schubert’s diary entry for 8 September 1816 contains such telling statements as ‘Man resembles a ball, to be played with by chance and passion … Happy he who finds a true man-friend. Happier still he who finds a true friend in his wife. To a free man matrimony is a terrifying thought in these days: he exchanges it either for melancholy or for crude sensuality. Monarchs of to-day, you see this and are silent. Or do you not see it? If so, O God, shroud our senses and feelings in numbness; yet take back the veil again one day without lasting harm … To be noble and unhappy is to feel the full depths of misfortune and happiness, just as to be noble and happy is to feel happiness and misfortune’. See Deutsch, , Schubert: A Documentary Biography, 70–71 Google Scholar.
42 Anselm Hüttenbrenner (1794–1868) sent Franz Liszt some memories of Schubert around 1854, which included recollected statements from a conversation with the composer. According to Hüttenbrenner, Schubert told him: ‘I loved someone very dearly and she loved me too. She was a schoolmaster’s daughter, somewhat younger than myself and in a Mass, which I composed, she sang the soprano solos most beautifully and with great feeling … For three years she hoped I would marry her; but I could not find a position which would have provided for us both. She then bowed to her parents’ wishes and married someone else, which hurt me very much. I still love her and there has been no one else since who has appealed to me as much or more than she. She was just not meant for me’. See Deutsch, , Schubert: Memoirs by His Friends, 182 Google Scholar. While Hüttenbrenner committed these words to paper over a quarter-century after Schubert’s death, bearing errors of fact (Therese’s father had passed away in 1804 and his widow continued to run the family silk factory near the Lichtental Church in what is now the northern part of Vienna), they do seem to suggest that Schubert had resigned himself to his loss; see Deutsch, , Schubert: A Documentary Biography, 47 Google Scholar.
43 My research on Schubert’s late instrumental and sacred choral music suggests that under the duress of his chronic illness, some of the masterworks of his final years may have arisen through retreat into the refuge of his creative imagination, where alternative and transcendental realities could exist, and where present circumstances did not intrude. See Sobaskie, James William, ‘Schubert’s Self-Elegies’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review 5/2 (2008): 71–105 Google Scholar, as well as Sobaskie, James William, ‘Contextual Processes in Schubert’s Late Sacred Choral Music’, in Rethinking Schubert Rethinking Schubert, ed. Lorraine Byrne Bodley and Julian Horton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar. If Schubert sought solace within imaginal realms later in life during times of distress, why not earlier, when it became clear that his relationship with Therese would not become what he had hoped?
Graham Johnson makes a similar point in his commentary on Die schöne Müllerin: ‘Alone and terminally ill, Schubert had to face the stark realities of the future as he worked on this cycle … He had no psychiatrist to whom he could pour out his problems, but he had the self-preserving instincts given to the greatest of artists: Schubert did not drown himself and he kept his talents not only intact but more finely honed than ever before … In writing Die schöne Müllerin the composer was in effect his own psychiatrist; he worked through his problems by transferring his disappointments and grief on to the shoulders of the young miller’. See Johnson, Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs, II, p. 885.
44 I thank Lorraine Byrne Bodley for sharing this thought with me.
45 In her essay, ‘In Pursuit of a Single Flame? On Schubert’s Settings of Goethe’s Poems’, elsewhere in this volume, Lorraine Byrne Bodley explores ways in which Schubert’s appropriations of poetic content may have produced results that depart significantly from the intentions of the poet and allow for different interpretations, depending on perspective.
46 Of ‘An die Nachtigall’, John Reed attests: ‘The song was published in July 1829 as op. 98 no. 1 by Diabelli. The opus number may have been assigned by Schubert himself’. See Reed, The Schubert Song Companion, 37. Schubert’s Op. 97, the sacred song ‘Glaube, Hoffnung und Liebe’, composed to a text by Christoff Kuffner, appeared on 6 October 1828, six weeks before the composer died, so it is possible that he even had had an opportunity to examine the proof of ‘An die Nachtigall’, as Graham Johnson suggests; see Johnson, , Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs, II, 474–475 Google Scholar.
47 See Kramer’s, Richard Distant Cycles: Schubert and the Conceiving of Song (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994)Google Scholar.
48 ‘Dramatic Implications of Contextual Processes in Two Serenades of Schubert’, in Drama in the Music of Franz Schubert, ed. Joe Davies and James Sobaskie (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, forthcoming).