Die schöne Müllerin, complete

Sweeping judgments are always perilous, but with Franz Schubert's Die schone Müllerin I feel myself on solid ground: This cycle of twenty songs is an unparalleled monument to the man and the era. Depth of expression and compositional finesse accord it the highest position in the art song repertoire. Among German-speaking peoples Schubert's Müllerin is as beloved and as reflective of a deep-seated cultural identity as, for instance, the National Parks are for Americans. In these songs he perfects the quicksilver changes of mood, like changes from sun to shade on a billowy spring afternoon. It's a fortuitous analogy, for the aesthetics of landscape painting - espoused by Constable in England, Friedrich in Germany, even the Hudson River School here in America - resonate with Schubert's music and his choice in poetry.

1823 was a critical year for Schubert. At age 26, his life's journey was far nearer its end than its beginning. He did not know this, of course, but ominous signs were starting to appear. Prior to spending much of the year in hospital, Schubert had been devoted to achieving a durable success in opera. It was not to be. Fortunately Schubert continued to compose in other genres, producing a treasure of works for which he is fondly remembered today. At the very end of 1823, in a burst activity that appears to have been fairly typical of his genius, Schubert completed a setting of twenty poems by Wilhelm Muller.

The genesis of Muller's poetic cycle, given the provocative title "Poems Found in the Papers Left Behind by a Journeyman Horn Player," goes back to 1816 when he introduced it as an informally staged drama at a Berlin salon. At its core is the isolated wanderer, one of the most popular and powerful symbols of the Romantic search for fulfillment. Muller cast himself in that role, and life imitated art as he competed with poet Clem-ens Brentano (the hunter) for the real-life affections of his miller-maid, Luise Hensel. Failure in love ultimately assured literary success. Muller's poems appeared in print in 1821 to great public acclaim. Still, he lamented his inability to set them properly to music, for which the texts seemed to call out. Interestingly, Muller prophesied Schubert's later contribution:

"If I could produce the tunes, my songs would please better than they do now. But courage! A kindred soul may be found who will hear the tunes behind the words, and give them back to me."

Kindred souls, indeed. Exact contemporaries; both former school teachers turned freelance artists; unlucky in love; destined for an early grave. Schubert displays an uncanny sympathy with Milller's poetry, both in terms of content and in terms of structure and meter. This sympathy is the greatest aesthetic achievement of Die schone Müllerin: the expressive immediacy, the oneness of melody and words which creates an ambience of unparalleled intimacy and lyric intensity. Schubert probes the wanderer's mindset to ex­tract profound insights not explicitly brought out by Muller's texts. He so thoroughly grasps the poetry's sentiment that he can use music - sometimes just the piano - to suggest deeper levels of meaning.

It would be difficult to attempt a summary of Die schone Müllerin. For­tunately, we have space here to examine Schubert's work in both broad and narrow perspectives, from highlights of individual songs to the emotional scope of the cycle as a whole. A few general observations will help frame the discussion. First, Schubert develops the psychology of music through his piano accompaniment, which represents an embodiment of the brook. From companion to sounding board to vicarious love object to enveloping grave, the brook's meandering path parallels every step of our love-besotted hero. Schubert's approach to accompaniment includes but goes well beyond the conventional use of piano prelude and postlude to make the piano an equal partner in the conversation. Muller's wanderer is never really alone.

Second, because these texts trace a narrative arc, we can discuss the songs each in turn. However, it must be conceded that the plot of Die schone Müllerin is not where interest lies; quite the opposite, in fact. Muller – and to an even greater extent Schubert, who eliminated five parts of the original poetic cycle – focuses on lyric meditations rather than dramatic action. What happens matters far less than how seemingly trivial events are interpreted by the wanderer.

Finally, one of Schubert's favored compositional devices - sudden reversals between major and minor modes - takes its place in capturing the fragile emotional state of Muller's Wertherian hero. It's a technique he employs across the whole spectrum of his oeuvre to indicate a fragile peace between joy and pain, between inner and outer emotional states. In its purest guise this slippage is not structurally motivated; the change from major to minor is purely aesthetic, a subtle change of color with on-ly immediate repercussions. (Such is the case in the opening gesture of Schubert’s G-Major String Quintet.) Furthermore, the modal inflection usually happens on either a repeated phrase of text (to indicate hidden truths where once everything seemed rosy) or is used to draw attention to a single key word. These features recur time and again as we undertake the fateful journey from love's promise to its agonizing demise.


THE INDIVIDUAL SONGS

The opening song, "Das Wandern," sets the tone of the entire cycle in several important ways. Its simple form and harmonic language conveying a folksy earnestness and transparency. The major mode establishes an optimistic starting point for the wanderer's experience. We glimpse Eden, Man in harmony with Nature. The hero hasn't yet met the tragic love of his life; he desires nothing more than to wander, poor but free and peaceful, forever. Schubert sets up a suitably high plateau from which the wanderer's mood can subsequently plummet.

The mood of song 2 ("Wohin?") is much the same. Schubert continues the preceding piano texture – ebullient arpeggios in the right hand – to suggest rippling water, a connection crucial to the almost tangible presence of the brook in later moments of story. Both songs deal with the brook's role as teacher. "From water we have learned" to wander, says song no. 1, and now the hero goes freely whither the water leads. Their courses are one­ symbolically at first, literally so at the end of the cycle.

In song 3 ("Halt!") we first encounter Schubert's important rapid changes from major to minor mode. The scene starts to come into view: the mill and its splashing wheel, a place for our wanderer to pause his endless journey. A tinge of minor-mode foreboding colors the final line, where the hero fatally interprets the brook's motion as having personal connotations, leading him to the locus of much joy and pain.

Songs 4 and 5 match texture to message as the story moves along. The former maintains a sweet temper (thanksgiving) as the love-object first comes into view; the latter song takes its lead from the hero's bravura and proceeds on bubbling sixteenth notes full of the resilience and strength that the poor wanderer can only feign. But I anticipate....

The all-important question "Does she love me?" comes in song 6. And despite statements to the contrary ("I would ask no flower"), one can almost hear the young man pulling off petals, one by one, in the rhythmic, hesitant accompaniment of the first section. The middle section, addressed to the brook, follows more freely but with telltale deflections into minor. The "Impatience" described in Song 7 becomes rushing chords in the piano and athletic, skipwise emotion in the voice. Schubert leads the voice to its highest pitches repeatedly in this extroverted piece, whose mood contrasts with the following "Morning Greeting" as night to day.

Song 8 ("Morgengruß") is one of Schubert's finest. It moves from an opening hymn texture, through a moment of tonal darkening, finally arriving at triplet figuration that supports the voice's sweet chordal third of C Major. Song 9 relies on its 6/8 rhythm to suggest a lullaby; the wanderer plants his seeds of love – come what may – beneath the beloved's window, where he will sing her to sleep.

Until now, anything has been possible, all the verbs present tense. In Song 10, the critical change to past tense – to reflections on what was and what might have been – marks the beginning of our hero's downward spiral. As noted music historian Charles Rosen puts it, "The most signal triumphs of the Romantic portrayal of memory are not those which recall past happiness, but remembrances of those moments when future happiness still seemed possible." At first Schubert lets nothing cloud the sunny music, though the AAAB structure opens a window to more pessimistic ideas in the final stanza, where even the heavens symbolically weep for the poor youth. The ensuing song ("Mein!") labors bravely to dispel unfavorable signs, all the way to its emphatic final chord.

Song 12 ("Pause") begins the set of texts linked by the color green. The opening theme echoes horn calls – a favorite romantic symbol connoting distance – and a sad peace infuses every bar. Schubert's striking harmonic changes make "Pause" a favorite subject for analysis, but the most psychologically potent detail is the well-placed fluctuation between major and minor near the end. In song 13 the connotations of green are still positive, but by the start of song 14, in which the rival/hunter first appears, the mood has done an about-face. The dark C minor, staccato texture, and equestrian skipping figures depict a jealous tirade. In song 15 he asks the brook to upbraid the maiden for her fickleness. The hero's world has narrowed considerably from song 1; psychological strain inspires music that is driven and at times frantic.

Song 16 forms one of the emotional cruxes of Die schone Müllerin. In addition to pleading appoggiaturas and repeated pulsing chords, "Die liebe Farbe" features an obsessive pedal tone (F-sharp) that appears on every sixteenth note and is thus sounded over 200 times! As the pull of the grave grows stronger, the hero's emotions become more raw. The next song (no. 17) includes a final show of defiance, as if life can go on without love. But Schubert closes the case with the stark and desolate E minor opening to "Trockne Blumen" (song 18). The only time it turns brighter – to E Major, foreshadowing the key of the final song – is when the hero fantasizes how the maiden will miss him after he's gone. The shift between songs 18 (E major) and 19 (G minor) seems intentionally disturbing and abrupt. Muller's text offers an imagined dialogue between our two main characters: wanderer and brook. Schubert's music for the water, as expected, is bright and fluid, whereas the youth sings a poignant dirge.

At last, in a brilliant stroke, Schubert turns to E Major for the only song in Die schone Müllerin not sung by the wanderer, "Der Baches Wiegenlied." As he would do in "Der Lindenbaum" from Winterreise (an 1827 song cycle also based on Miiller texts), Schubert selects E Major as the sound of still­ ness and peace in death. Schubert calls upon recurrent features from earlier songs – vacillations between major and minor, horn calls, even the pedal tone – but how different the result. We have reached the culmination of the brook's humanization only to have it sing with the voice of an angel. This is the journey's end, for us and for the wanderer. We can only hope death will find us so serenely accepting of our mortality.

(c) Jason Stell, 2010