What better to dispel those January blues than a song cycle about death?
Schubert's song cycle 'Winterreise' meaning 'Winter's Journey' consists of 24 connected songs for piano and tenor voice or 'lieder'. They are all connected by the idea that a man sets off on a journey (in winter, who'd have guessed it?) after being rejected by his lover through the snow, and each song that he sings is something that he comes across or happens during that journey.
Franz Schubert was a notably introverted composer, who spent a lot of time to himself. He overcame tragedies and illness, but finally died aged just 31. Nevertheless, he composed A LOT of music (and I mean a lot), most of which was of this type. Many people think that 'Winterreise' is one of his best works, indeed they were used when we were learning to study the song form - and with good reason. The music here is deceptively both simple and complicated. Its melodies are memorable and melodic and on first listen this might just sound like a load of songs in German - but there are lots of little things that Schubert does to make these songs quite clever indeed.
Firstly, if you look at a translation of the songs in your own language (I'll link to an English one at the end of this post) and follow it through you'll notice that the music really does represent what's being sung in a really vivid way. I would argue that Schubert is one of the best composers out there at doing this. He's also musically really clever, there are some quite complicated key changes that he makes seem quite simple, and unusual structures which really bring out the meaning of each song. All of this culminates to create a song cycle which is full of a very realistic humanity, one which exists because of the way the composer has subtly created it in the music through a use of meaningful contrasts. There is complexity here which is presented simply, and there is beauty here which is presented with a tear in the eye. In fact, more than a tear in the eye - there are a lot of references to suicide and death in this cycle. In fact, this song cycle is so depressing that Schubert's friends feared for his mental health when they first heard this. Schubert died a year later.
I've embedded a version of the cycle played on the sort of piano that would have been around when Schubert composed the songs, as it has a slightly different quality which would have actually added to the way things sounded - for example - the clatter of keys on this original 'pianoforte' might have added to windy and stormy effects. Instead of going through each song, I'll just leave a translation at the bottom of the page for you to read through whenever you want to. Also, if you're not the sort of person that likes listening to 'warbly voices' (although this recording is pretty good for not being too ridiculously warbly!) there's a really excellent version for cello and piano on Spotify by Yi-Tzu Pan and Hendrik Heilmann which I think captures the hidden beauty in this otherwise very sad collection of songs.
I hope this doesn't make you too sad! I'll be back next Sunday with something a little bit more upbeat!
If you liked this, try listening to:
- Any of Schubert's other song cycles including the compilation 'Schwanengesang' which contains my favourite of Schubert's songs; 'Ständchen'
- Beethoven's 'An die ferne Geliebte'
- Any of Mahler's song cycles
English translations of the songs in this cycle: http://www.gopera.com/lieder/translations/schubert_911.pdf
Comments
Post a Comment