Franz Schubert and His World

by Gibbs, Christopher H. , Solvik, Morten

  Often forgotten in discussions of the Liederspiel are the domestic origins of the genre. In the very next sentence of the passage quoted above, Reichardt continues: “I looked around for something and thought I had found it in a little piece that I had prepared several years previous for a completely different purpose: a domestic party for my own family.”51 The “little piece” that Reichardt transformed into a stage work for the theater reflected a practice of music making in the home that would continue for decades. Although intended for a private audience, such works shared many features with their theatrical namesake: stories told by text and verse involving several characters and the presentation of amateur songs. When produced at home the Liederspiel became something of a parlor game in which the literary sources, song texts, tunes selected, and stories told were chosen and arranged mainly by those attending. This was entirely in keeping with the Biedermeier practice of combining high culture and entertainment: poetry recitations, readings, charades, word games, dramatic sketches, dances, singing, and instrumental performance were all combined, presented, and received for the edification and pleasure of a gathering of friends. This is reflected compellingly in the following contemporaneous review of Hans Georg Nägeli’s Liederkranz auf das Jahr 1816:

  The general purpose, which always remains foremost as regards the whole audience, is here, too, to offer these solo songs as a way to promote sociability. The texts are chosen so that they can be sung not by the group but nevertheless in the group by alternating singers. They are especially well suited for small circles where several people capable of singing come together, even though in terms of number and the character of their voices they do not constitute a choir. Such [people] can, in this manner, entertain themselves in a kind of Liederspiel, whose charm will be all the more elevated by the contrast in individuality and voice types, etc.52

  This entertainment for friends to be played at home clearly enjoyed a fair share of popularity. The most famous example of this practice is described by Ludwig Rellstab in his biography of the composer Ludwig Berger:

  A circle of talented young people had formed in the house of the privy state councilor Stägemann which gave each other poetic assignments …. They posed a type of dramatic puzzle by the name of “Rose, the miller maiden” that one could only solve by linking together Lieder. Rose, the pretty miller-maid is loved by the miller, the garden boy, and the hunter; carefree and a little careless, she gives her heart to the latter, though not without earlier having favored and raised the hopes of the miller. The roles were divided between the members of the circle. The bright daughter of the house [Hedwig Stägemann], endowed with an unusually fine talent for poetry, took the role of the miller maid; Wilhelm Müller became the miller; the painter [Wilhelm] Hensel, later the husband of Fanny Mendelssohn, played the hunter. Each had to express themselves in Lieder in which the relationships to one another were more clearly stated. The game grew to enjoy great popularity.53

  As described above, Wilhelm Müller and numerous friends met regularly in the Stägemann home in Berlin and, during the course of their soirees, hit upon the idea of producing a poetic-dramatic rendering of a literary idea that they had borrowed from a popular tale. It was here that Wilhelm Müller found the inspiration for his own cycle of poems, Die schöne Müllerin, written and published years later. Each of the participants was responsible for producing poetry suitable to his or her part at various points in the story. The result was a simply staged play in which the feelings and thoughts of the protagonists and the unfolding of the plot were presented in a sequence of short poetic recitations. When Berger joined their circle some time later, he was employed to set the poems to music so that the roles could be sung. The result was a Liederspiel in which sociability and individual creativity were blended together into a consummate Biedermeier art form. The Berlin friends took their work seriously enough to have it published in 1818 (Figure 8). As Rellstab relates:

  There were in all seven suitors around Rose, the pretty miller maiden. Berger initially composed ten purely strophic songs with simple accompaniment titled: “Songs from a Societal Liederspiel: The Pretty Miller Maid” that originally ended with the death of the repentant maiden and the hunter grieving at her grave (as in Goethe).54

  Schubert’s Kosegarten settings of 1815 show every indication of having been precisely such a work. The selection of texts to tell a popular story of a fickle heart, infatuation, and tragic despair, the short, strophic songs to be sung by amateurs portraying multiple characters—all point to a Liederspiel. Even the notion of game-playing can be found here, for the song Luisens Antwort reveals Schubert at work in presenting his friends with a type of double parody: Kosegarten’s text constitutes an answer to a very popular poem of the time, “Das Lied der Trennung” by Klamer Eberhard Karl Schmidt. Schmidt’s poem depicts Wilhelm wondering whether his beloved Luisa will remember him now that they are apart; Kosegarten’s Antwort (answer) portrays Luisa confirming how deeply committed she remains to Wilhelm, and even now, “never will Luisa forget you.” Schubert was clearly cognizant of the relationship between these two poems and he chose an ingenious way of acknowledging the connection. Not long after its initial publication, “Das Lied der Trennung” was set to music by Mozart. In turning to Kosegarten’s echo of Schmidt, Schubert likewise invokes Mozart in both the accompaniment pattern and the rhythm of the melody (see Example 9).55 The clever paraphrase was almost certainly not lost on Schubert’s companions.

  Figure 8. Title page, Ludwig Berger’s Die schöne Müllerin (1818).

  Yet another feature of the Kosegarten songs points to its unusual construction. The thirteenth piece in the set, Das Abendrot, is, properly speaking, not a Lied at all but a vocal trio. Though Schubert set numerous texts in arrangements for two tenors and bass during his life, the voice parts here imply two female singers and one male singer. This interpretation is supported by the texture of the piano accompaniment, but such a constellation is most unusual. In fact, it is the only vocal trio in Schubert’s output that calls for this combination of voices.56 Positioned as it is within the Kosegarten set, however, the part-song makes a great deal of sense. The singing characters of the Liederspiel are joined together in a parenthetic moment of reflection before the last segment of the work turns to its denouement and sorrowful conclusion.

  Example 9. Schubert’s parody of Mozart.

  Conclusion

  Much of Schubert’s life has gone missing in the two hundred years that have transpired since 1815, the year he composed these songs. We have no additional documents that corroborate the existence of this Liederspiel, but we know very little of the details from that year at all. If such material had been preserved, it would no doubt mention the type of music making and socializing that cultivated the domestic Liederspiel in the homes of the culturally inclined of Schubert’s world. Indeed, it would be odd if this highly productive and supremely talented song composer had not attempted to write such a set for his friends given the artistic setting described in what later became known as Schubertiades. Schubert was too aware of the artistic tastes and social practices of his day not to try his hand at this increasingly popular musical innovation. The private nature of such an entertainment combined with its dating to early in Schubert’s career could explain why no effort was made to publish this as a collection.

  Eight years would pass before Schubert compiled a cycle he deemed worthy to print. In completing Die schöne Müllerin he unwittingly followed the path of its author Wilhelm Müller, who had taken the Liederspiel that he and his friends had written in 1816 and transformed it into his own poetic project. In so doing, the author radically altered the telling of the story. Rather than having individual figures reflect on their thoughts in a presentational style, Müller interiorized the entire sequence of events into the mind of the miller apprentice. The multi-character play was now an interior monologue, told by a participant in the story whose emotional involvement renders his narrative increasingly unreliable and whose voice i
s ultimately surrendered to the brook. The cyclical depiction of the sole protagonist caught in a reality that undoes him must have gripped Schubert as it inspired him to set a new a standard for Romantic song. Yet even in reaching for new forms of expression he must have recognized in the plot the outlines of a story or even a “song play” echoing a more innocent perspective from somewhere in his past. By 1823 that time was over, but the Kosegarten settings may well have proved an important early attempt at large-scale organization of songs, an art form that Schubert would come to master as no other. These songs, then, provide us with a previously unobserved perspective on the development of his genius.

  NOTES

  The initial research for this work was made possible by the Jubiläumsfond of the Austrian National Bank. The author wishes to express his gratitude for this support and to thank especially Otto Brusatti, the project coordinator.

  1. This is the first publication that treats the details of this discovery in English; a monograph on the subject is planned. Aspects of this research are discussed in Morten Solvik, “Lieder im geselligen Spiel—Schuberts neu entdeckter Kosegarten-Zyklus von 1815,” Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 53/1 (1997): 31–39; “Finding a Context for Schubert’s Kosegarten Cycle,” in Schubert und seine Freunde, ed. Eva Badura-Skoda, Gerold Gruber, Walburga Litschauer, and Carmen Ottner (Vienna, 1999), 169–82; and “Of Songs and Cycles: A Franz Schubert Bifolio,” in Music History from Primary Sources: A Guide to the Moldenhauer Archives, ed. Jon Newsom and Alfred Mann (Washington, D.C., 2000), 392–99. See also Elizabeth Norman McKay, “Zu Schuberts Vertonungen von Kosegarten-Texten aus dem Jahr 1815,” Schubert durch die Brille 24 (2000): 141–46; Jörg Büchler, “Zur Diskussion über die zyklische Zusammengehörigkeit von Schuberts Kosegarten-Vertonungen aus dem Jahre 1815,” Schubert: Perspektiven 10/2 (2010): 139–55; and Schubert Liedlexikon, ed. Walther Dürr, Michael Kube, Uwe Schweikert, and Stefanie Steiner with Michael Kohlhäufl (Kassel, 2012), 158.

  2. Since some songs have survived in more than one type of source, the percentages do not add up to 100 percent. This data is culled from Otto Erich Deutsch, Franz Schubert: Thematisches Verzeichnis seiner Werke in chronologischer Folge, rev. ed. (Kassel, 1978). “Lied” is defined as a song in German for solo voice and piano. These figures include compositionally separate settings of the same text (Bearbeitungen=versions) but not variants (Fassungen) of a single song. For a discussion of this distinction, see Maurice J. E. Brown, Essays on Schubert (London, 1966), 268.

  3. For more on the Schubert Liederheft project, see Christopher H. Gibbs, The Life of Schubert (Cambridge, 2000), 79–80. This project was also to include Matthisson and Hölty settings.

  4. None of the original fair copies of Die schöne Müllerin have survived, and original manuscripts for only four of the songs are known; see Deutsch, Verzeichnis, 488–89.

  5. Two of the manuscripts held in private hands have since been acquired by public collections: A-Wn Mus. Hs. 43.946 and A-Wst 16.400, both fair copies (sigla here and elsewhere stem from RISM, the international index for music sources).

  6. See Robert Winter, “Paper Studies and the Future of Schubert Research,” in Schubert Studies: Problems of Style and Chronology, ed. Eva Badura-Skoda and Peter Branscombe (Cambridge, 1982), 209–75.

  7. This is confirmed by Walther Dürr in Franz Schubert: Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke, Series IV, vol. 8: Lieder (Kassel, 2009), xvii, passim.

  8. The exception is Hektors Abschied, D312 (text by Schiller), today located in a separate manuscript at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris.

  9. It is thus all the more surprising that until now virtually no serious scholarly effort has sought to make sense of these marginalia. Ernst Hilmar, in “Die Schubert-Autographe der Sammlung Hans P. Wertitsch: Katalog,” Schubert durch die Brille 13 (1994): 3–42, does note inscriptions of this type but provides no explanation for them.

  10. Not all marginal markings were added by Johann Wolf. Additional numberings and annotations, especially regarding typesetting, can also be found on many of these pages. Walther Dürr raises this point about sequences of numbers in red crayon (Rötel) frequently situated in the upper-left corner of Schubert manuscripts (Dürr, IV/8, xviii); so far, no comprehensive documented explanation for this different set of numbers has been proposed.

  11. On folio 2 recto of A-Wn L14 Münze 2.

  12. In Alexander Weinmann, Verlagsverzeichnis Giovanni Cappi bis A. O. Witzendorf: Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alt-Wiener Musikverlages, series 2, no.11 (Vienna, 1967), 207, Johann Wolf is listed as a composer of piano vignettes and paraphrases of Lieder, published mostly from the 1840s through the 1860s.

  13. My thanks to Rita Steblin for bringing these to my attention.

  14. Handschriftensammlung, Wienbibliothek, I.N.3584.

  15. The notice had appeared in the Allgemeine Theaterzeitung 108 (5 May 1848): 436.

  16. “Herrn Karl Haslinger zur Erinnerung an den 25-jährigen Bestand seiner musi-kalischen Abende gewidmet 1862,” Handschriftensammlung, Wienbibliothek, I.N.49883. This item is no longer available for study. Haslinger’s father was Tobias Haslinger (1787– 1842).

  17. Another work from Wolf’s oeuvre suggests the same conclusion. His “Etüden-Variationen über Franz Schuberts Lied Das Abendroth,” was evidently based on D627 (or possibly the trio D236); D627 was published in 1867, D236 in 1892.

  18. See Otto Erich Deutsch, Musikverlags-Nummern, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1961), 11; and Alexander Weinmann and John Warren, “Diabelli, Anton,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (London, 2001), 7:279–80.

  19. That Wolf worked for Spina and not Diabelli can also be seen in other marginal notes. On the verso of A-Wn 43.946 (Geist der Liebe, D233), we find a Wolf reference to a song in the “Verlags Cat. Spina” that is not yet engraved, a sure sign that Wolf had access to an internal listing at C. A. Spina; see Autographen aus verschiedenem Besitz: Auktion am 17 Mai 1960 in Marburg, J. A. Stargardt Catalogue 548 (Marburg, 1960), item 537 after page 126. Walther Dürr, in “Franz Schubert: Das Finden. Von der ersten Niederschrift zur Reinschrift,” in Beiträge zur musikalischen Quellenkunde, 346, also concludes that Johann Wolf worked for Spina, but does not explain the marginalia.

  20. The Witteczek-Spaun collection contains two indices of Schubert’s songs titled “Repertorium”; see Franz Schubert: Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke, Series VIII: Supplement Band 8, Quellen 2: Franz Schuberts Werke in Abschriften: Liederalben und Sammlungen by Walther Dürr (Kassel, 1975), 108.

  21. This listing might be the “Aufstellung Schubertscher Lieder von Anton Diabelli” last seen at an auction in Vienna around 1922; see Deutsch, Verzeichnis, 87 (“Anmerkung” to D122).

  22. Examples of numberings for each of the categories (except III) can be found in the following manuscripts: I—US-AUS Lake Collection (D228, 229), v; II—A-Wn Mus. Hs. 40.990, r; IV—A-Wn Mus. Hs. 41.628; V—US-Wc Moldenhauer (Das Mädchen aus der Fremde, D117), 1r; VI—US-CA bMS Mus 108(21), r; VII—A-Wn 40.993, r (“von verschiedenen Handschriften”); VIII—US-AUS Lake Collection (D228, 229), v.

  23. A look at the songs in these two groups confirms this: the Lieder of Group I and Group II that I have thus far identified are clearly ordered in this fashion. There are only two exceptions among the 41 Lieder that I have been able to assign to these two categories: “I, 57” seems to refer to D645, which we only have in sketch form and might be dated early 1819; it may well have been written before “I, 49” (D923, 1827); “II, 45” seems to refer to D252, written 12 August 1815, long before “II, 43,” D867 (January 1826).

  24. It might refer to a generic designation for manuscripts bearing neither signature nor date or signature and no date. Such a determination is at this point not possible.

  25. See the discussion of different song versions above.

  26. In 1876 Alwin Cranz (1834–1923), proprietor of the music publishing house of August Cranz, bought the firm of C. A. Spina from Friedrich Schreiber. Albert Cranz, a descendant, in the 1950s hel
ped run a part of the firm in Brussels. See Riemann Musik Lexikon (Mainz, 1959), “Personenteil A–K,” 349.

  27. Stargardt, September 1957, lot 421.

  28. This conclusion may be confirmed by a marginal note in A-Wn Mus. Hs. 41.628, folio 1 verso (early version of Die Mondnacht): in pencil to the right of Wolf’s reference to Group IV is written what appears to be “20 Gesänge.” “Gesänge” is difficult to decipher, but the number is indisputable, which itself seems suggestive.

  29. Kosegarten, it seems, used variants of his name throughout his life. The name given here appears on his certificate of baptism; in 1777 he substituted “Theobul” for “Gotthard” and from 1815 went by “Ludwig Gotthard.” See H. Franck, Gotthard Ludwig Kosegarten. Ein Lebensbild (Halle, 1887), 2–3 and 402n1. See also the biography by Kosegarten’s son: Johann Gottfried Ludwig Kosegarten, Kosegartens Leben: Dichtungen von Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten, vol. 12 (5th ed., Greifswald, 1827); and Lewis M. Holmes, Kosegarten: The Turbulent Life and Times of a Northern German Poet (Berne, 2004).

  30. For more on Kosegarten’s connection to German Romanticism, see Lewis M. Holmes, Kosegarten’s Cultural Legacy: Aesthetics, Religion, Literature, Art, and Music (Berne, 2005); and Albert Boime, Art in an Age of Bonapartism: 1800–1815, vol. 2 of A Social History of Modern Art (Chicago and London, 1990), 315–635, esp. 377–79, 411–16, and 587–602.

  31. For more on this speech, see Kosegarten, Kosegartens Leben, 235–39.

  32. Franck, Kosegarten, 240–41 (here and elsewhere all translations mine). The publication announcement to which Schiller refers is probably the same as that which appeared at the back of the Göttingen Musen Almanach of 1798.