MELBOURNE RECITAL CENTRE PRESENTS
A SCHU
BERT
J O UR
NEY
Three Song Cycles
—
Florian Boesch, BASS- BARITONE
Malcolm Martineau, piano
contents
3
Welcome
The next three nights are a rare chance to hear some
of the most sublime works of art in close succession
performed by two of their greatest exponents. Hearing
Florian Boesch and Malcolm Martineau perform just
one of Schubert’s song cycles would be a remarkable
treat, but we’re privileged to join them on the complete
journey into the heart and soul of three masterpieces.
Schubert’s song cycles are the pinnacle of the art song
repertoire and the truest test of a singer’s interpretative
and technical prowess – the musical equivalent of a
Shakespeare soliloquy. Exquisite and harrowing by
turns, the interlinked songs of Die schöne Müllerin
(The Lovely Miller-Girl) and its companion work,
Winterreise (Winter Journey), chart a story of obsessive
love found and lost, and of sanity gradually eroded,
as spring gives way to a bleak winter landscape. The
poignant coda of Schwanenesang (Swan Song) was
compiled after Schubert’s early death and contains
many of his most loved songs.
Welcome
4&5
About the artists
6&7
Franz Schubert
8 - 23
Die schöne Müllerin
6 July 2015
We are delighted to be able to bring you unforgettable
experiences like this Schubert Journey and other unique
concerts by the world’s best musicians. On behalf of the
Centre and our audience, sincere thanks to the Legal
Friends of Melbourne Recital Centre, Hans & Petra Henkell
and Lady Primrose Potter AC who provided generous
support for these three concerts. Their support, and the
donations of music-lovers such as you, keep this exquisite
venue at the heart of Victoria’s musical life.
24 - 35
Schwanengesang
7 July 2015
36 - 49
Warm regards
Winterreise
8 July 2015
Mary Vallentine AO
Chief Exectuive Officer
Melbourne Recital Centre
50
A Schubert Journey Patrons
—
Hans & Petra Henkell
Lady Primrose Potter AC
Inspired Giving
51
Thank You
Legal Friends of Melbourne Recital Centre
3
The Artists
Florian Boesch started his vocal studies with
Kammersängerin Ruthilde Boesch. From 1997 on he
studied at the University of Music in Vienna, and in
previous years at Lied and Oratorio with Robert Holl.
Malcolm Martineau was born in Edinburgh,
read Music at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge
and studied at the Royal College of Music.
He has presented his own series at the Wigmore Hall (a
Britten and a Poulenc series and Decade by Decade –
100 years of German Song broadcast by the BBC) and
at the Edinburgh Festival (the complete lieder of Hugo
Wolf). He has appeared throughout Europe (including
London’s Wigmore Hall, Barbican, Queen Elizabeth Hall
and Royal Opera House; La Scala, Milan; the Châtelet,
Paris; the Liceu, Barcelona; Berlin’s Philharmonie and
Konzerthaus; Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and the
Vienna Konzerthaus and Musikverein), North America
(including in New York both Alice Tully Hall and
Carnegie Hall), Australia (including the Sydney Opera
House) and at the Aix en Provence, Vienna, Edinburgh,
Schubertiade, Munich and Salzburg Festivals.
Florian Boesch made his debut as Wozzeck at
Oper Köln and sang Guglielmo in Così fan tutte at the
Salzburg Festival. Other operatic highlights include
a staged version of Handel’s Messiah, Handel’s
Radamisto with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and
René Jacobs at the Theater an der Wien and the
Hamburg State Opera, as well as a new production
of Die Zauberflöte at the Bolshoi.
Recording projects have included Schubert, Schumann
and English song recitals with Bryn Terfel (for Deutsche
Grammophon); Schubert and Strauss recitals with
Simon Keenlyside (for EMI); recital recordings with
Angela Gheorghiu and Barbara Bonney (for Decca),
Magdalena Kožená (for DG), Della Jones (for Chandos),
Susan Bullock (for Crear Classics), Solveig Kringelborn
(for NMA); Amanda Roocroft (for Onyx); the complete
Fauré songs with Sarah Walker and Tom Krause; the
complete Britten Folk Songs for Hyperion; the complete
Beethoven Folk Songs for Deutsche Grammophon; the
complete Poulenc songs for Signum; and Britten Song
Cycles as well as Schubert’s Winterreise with Florian
Boesch for Onyx.
Future performances include the Matthäus-Passion,
conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt with Concentus
Musicus Wien at the Musikverein, Brahms’s Ein
deutsches Requiem at the Edinburgh Festival, La
Damnation de Faust with the London Symphony
Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev, the War
Requiem in Copenhagen, Schubert’s Lazarus at the
Theater an der Wien and Wozzeck in Cologne. His
recordings include Dvořák’s Stabat Mater under
Herreweghe and the Schubert Song Cycles with
Malcolm Martineau at the piano.
Malcolm Martineau
A Schubert Journey
In the concert hall he works closely with
Nikolaus Harnoncourt, under whose direction
he has sung on tour in Japan and at the
Musikverein, as well as with the Berlin Philharmonic
and at the Salzburg Festival. Other highlights include
Das Paradies und die Peri with the Vienna Philharmonic
and Simon Rattle, Bach’s Matthäus-Passion and
Johannes-Passion at the Concertgebouw, The Seasons
with Philippe Herreweghe, Weill’s Berliner Requiem
with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France
and Mendelssohn’s Elijah with Paul McCreesh and
Ivor Bolton.
Florian Boesch
Recognised as one of the leading accompanists of his
generation, he has worked with many of the world’s
greatest singers including Sir Thomas Allen, Dame
Janet Baker, Olaf Bär, Barbara Bonney, Ian Bostridge,
Angela Gheorghiu, Susan Graham, Thomas Hampson,
Della Jones, Simon Keenlyside, Angelika Kirchschlager,
Magdalena Kožená, Solveig Kringelborn, Jonathan
Lemalu, Dame Felicity Lott, Christopher Maltman,
Karita Mattila, Lisa Milne, Ann Murray, Anna Netrebko,
Anne Sofie von Otter, Joan Rodgers, Amanda Roocroft,
Michael Schade, Frederica von Stade, Sarah Walker and
Bryn Terfel.
The Austrian baritone is counted as one of today’s
foremost Lieder interpreters, with appearances at the
Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, Wigmore Hall,
the Concertgebouw, the Edinburgh Festival, the
Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, the Schwetzinger Festival
and the Philharmonie in Luxemburg as well as in the
USA and Canada.
Florian Boesch
Malcolm Martineau
He was a given an honorary doctorate at the Royal
Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in 2004, and
appointed International Fellow of Accompaniment in
2009. Malcolm was the Artistic Director of the 2011
Leeds Lieder Festival.
4
5
A Schubert Journey
Franz Schubert
If Franz Schubert (1797-1828) means only one thing,
for many people that is surely melody. ‘The Trout’,
‘the’ Rosamunde theme, perhaps; even, in a gloomy
mood, the organ grinder’s monotonous refrain
from The Winter Journey. This is as it should be, for
Schubert is the greatest of all composers of songs,
and his 600 or so spill over into all his music, often
less obviously than in the Trout Quintet.
Die Schöne Müllerin
Schubert was about – Schumann, who spoke of
‘heavenly length’; Liszt, for whom Schubert was
‘the most poetic musician ever’.
Schubert had been quietly founding a new music:
long-range in harmonic strategy, and plumbing
the depths of the heart. Schubert precociously
revealed his creative genius in songs, especially
the unparalleled Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel
(1814), and the next year another Goethe setting,
The Erl King. Schubert’s friends and admirers
understood his lyrical achievement, including his
first song cycle The Lovely Miller-Girl (Die schöne
Müllerin), composed after hospital treatment in 1823,
probably for syphilis. But even his friends were
puzzled by the pessimism of the songs of Winter
Journey (1827). The year after Schubert’s premature
death in 1828, a publisher gave the sentimental title
Swan Song to another cycle, 14 of his last songs.
But who was Franz Schubert? An unassuming,
painfully short-sighted man, who lived in Vienna
under a shadow cast by Beethoven, syphilitic, and
snuffed out, perhaps by typhoid fever, in his 31st
year. An unsophisticated tune-smith? That was the
side of him sentimentalised in the 1916 operetta
Lilac Time. The only great Viennese composer
actually born in the city, Schubert represents, on
the surface, the cosy Vienna of the Biedermeier
age, taking refuge in domesticity from political
repression. The songs, music for piano four-hands,
and above all the dances for piano were heard in
home and salon musicales. This music seemed
reassuring: the forms were those of a pupil of
Salieri, taking Mozart and Haydn for his models.
Gradually Schubert had found ways to express
his musical discoveries in other forms, such as two
symphonies (the ‘Unfinished’ of 1822 and the Great
C major No.9 in 1825). These and his late piano
sonatas, string quartets and quintet unfold a vast
new musical discourse. This Schubert was driven by a creative demon, looking up from his music
paper just long enough to ask, when a new name
was mentioned, ‘Kanevas?’ (Kann er was? What’s he good at?). This became Schubert’s nickname to
his friends. We are still discovering what Kanevas
was good at.
The musical evenings became known as
‘Schubertiads’. The prominent singer Johann
Michael Vogl, whom Schubert met in 1817, often
performed his songs with Schubert at the piano.
Franz’s art meant much to his friends. They were
proud when his more ‘public’ pieces (like The
Shepherd on the Rock) reached a wider audience,
but even they were baffled by his more visionary
creations. Later musicians began to realise what
David Garrett © 2002/2015
6
7
Program Night 1
Die schöne Müllerin
The Lovely Miller-Girl
Franz Schubert
Monday 6 July 2015
(b. Alsergrund, Vienna, Austria,1797 –
7.30pm, Elisabeth Murdoch Hall
d. Vienna, Austria, 1828)
Duration: One hour & 10 mins, no interval
This concert is being broadcast live on
ABC Classic FM
Die schöne Müllerin, D.795; Op.25
I
Das Wandern (To Wander)
II
Wohin? (Where to?)
III
Halt! (Wait!)
IVDanksagung an den Bach (Thanks to the Brook)
Illustrated pre-concert talk by Songmakers
Australia (6pm – 7pm, Salon)
The first of three monumental song cycles,
Die schöne Müllerin signifies the onset of a new
era of song writing. For the first time we see
Schubert setting a collection of poems with a
continuous plot, using very new and popular
poetry by Wilhelm Müller, full of drama and
pathos, more a reflection of real life than the
usual mythological legends or historical figures.
This song cycle was also cathartic in Schubert’s
life as it was written after he was diagnosed with
syphilis. This talk will be illustrated with other
iconic songs written during the same period.
8
V
Am Feierabend (The Hour of Rest)
VI
Der Neugierige (The Eager Questioner)
VII
Ungeduld (Impatience)
VIII
Morgengruss (Good Morning)
IX
Des Müllers Blumen (The Miller’s Flowers)
X
Tränenregen (Shower of Tears)
XI
Mein (Mine)
XII
Pause (Interlude)
XIIIMit dem grünen Lautenbande
(With the Green Lute-riband)
XIV
Der Jäger (The Hunter)
XV
Eifersucht und Stolz (Jealousy and Pride)
XVI
Die liebe Farbe (The Favorite Colour)
XVII
Die böse Farbe (The Hated Colour)
XVIII Trockne Blumen (Withered Flowers)
XIXDer Müller und der Bach
(The Miller and the Brook)
XX
9
Des Baches Wiegenlied (The Brook’s Lullaby)
Die schöne Müllerin
A Schubert Journey
Florian Boesch, bass-baritone
Malcolm Martineau, piano
1823, and it was in 1823 that he composed this tale
of a poet-singer who dies in the aftermath of erotic
experience. ‘Imagine a man whose health will never be
right again… whose most brilliant hopes have perished…
whom enthusiasm for all things beautiful threatens
to forsake,’ Schubert wrote to a friend: This is the
backdrop to Die schöne Müllerin.
In the late autumn of 1816, the 23-year-old poet
Wilhelm Müller took part in a weekly artistic salon
at the home of the Berlin privy councillor Friedrich
August von Stägemann. The other members of
the group included the 22-year-old artist Wilhelm
Hensel, who would later marry Fanny Mendelssohn;
von Stägemann’s 18-year-old sister Luise Hensel; the
later historian Friedrich Förster; and the 16-year-old
daughter of the household, Hedwig von Stägemann.
The young people embarked on the composition of
a Liederspiel (‘song-play’) on the venerable theme of
the miller maid (Hedwig) wooed by a variety of suitors:
a gardener (Luise in a ‘pants role’), a hunter (Wilhelm
Hensel), Müller (predestined by his name to be the
miller lad), and a Junker, or country squire (Förster).
The antique tale was ‘in the air’ at the time: Giovanni
Paisiello’s comic opera L’amor contrastato of 1788 was
popular in Germany as Die schöne Müllerin, Goethe
had written four mill-ballads in different national
styles, and Romantic writers followed suit. Only
fragments of the Stägemann Liederspiel are extant,
but from them, we learn that it ended with the miller
maid, overcome by remorse, drowning herself in the
same brook in which the miller lad died.
Danksagung an den Bach, the lad has clearly elected
to stay at the mill; when he asked the brook in the
previous song, ‘Is this what you meant?,’ he was asking,
‘should I stay at this mill?’ Now he asks the question
again, and it means, ‘To go to the miller maid – is this
what you meant?’ Surely, he tells himself, the brook is
her emissary sent to fetch him.
advantage in the ages-old chasse d’amour, or ‘hunt
of love,’ and shy, poetically-inclined miller lads cannot
compete with so much masculinity mantled in so
much myth. In Müller’s imagining, the apprentice is a
figure transposed from the Medieval poetry of courtly
love to a rustic context.
At the Beginning
The initial stages of his illness were so severe that he
had to be hospitalised, possibly in the summer of 1823.
The cycle was published the following year (1824) in
five booklets as Op.25 by the Viennese firm of Sauer
& Leidesdorf. Schubert dedicated the first edition
to his friend, Baron Carl von Schönstein, who had,
according to reports, a lovely lyrical high baritone
voice; Franz Liszt was moved to tears when he heard
Schönstein sing in 1838, 10 years after Schubert’s
death. We are told that in later life, the aristocratic
singer would receive mail addressed only to Baron
von Schönstein, Journeyman Miller; the tale may be
apocryphal, but one hopes it is true. For reasons about
which we can only conjecture, Die schöne Müllerin
did not immediately strike the public fancy, and there
were no reviews in Schubert’s lifetime. His friend
Franz von Schober tried to comfort him, writing, ‘And
your miller songs have also brought no great acclaim?
These hounds have no feelings or minds of their own,
and they blindly follow the noise and opinions of
others.’ But ‘the hounds’ would soon atone for their
initial neglect.
At the time, the young Müller, the best poet in the
group of young people, was in love with Luise Hensel,
but she was being strenuously courted by the older
Romantic poet Clemens Brentano (she never married,
however). In a traditional remedy for a broken heart,
Müller left Berlin in 1817 for journeys to Austria and
Italy, where he became a philhellene, or supporter
of Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire.
Returning to his native Dessau in 1818, he began
revising the Liederspiel as a monodrama, a poetic cycle
spoken or sung by a single character. Everyone we
meet, everything we see, everything we know comes
from his perspective.
Three Main Characters
The dramatis personae of this cycle have a long
literary ancestry extending back to Chaucer and
beyond. The miller – often the richest person in the
Medieval village because his place of business was
where grains were ground into the stuff of bread and
life – traditionally had a daughter, often of a lusty
disposition, who is courted by a hunter and a young
and inexperienced apprentice at the mill. In German
folklore, hunters are fearless, independent, at home
in Nature, disdainful of civilisation, and possessed
of irresistible sexual magnetism. They have the
The composition of this cycle marks the beginning
of the end of Schubert’s life. He discovered that he
had contracted syphilis sometime in late 1822 or early
10
First Love
In Das Wandern, the miller lad resolves to leave his
current place of employment and go wandering; even
the mill-stones move, he declares, and the brook’s
flowing waters teach us to go from place to place.
We hear the lad’s youthful energy and freshness
of purpose in the athleticism of the singer’s part at
the outset, also in the striding broken octaves in the
bass. At the end of each stanza of this quasi folk-like
strict strophic song, Schubert repeats the refrains
fourfold in an incantatory way: The miller lad casts
a spell on himself by repeating powerful words and
then ventures forth under their sway. In Wohin!, the
lad follows a brook that will lead him to another mill
and wonders whether the brook is Destiny’s guide.
In this song, he invokes the Germanic folklore of
alluring sirens, nixies, and water sprites who tempt
men to their deaths in the watery depths: This is the
first foreshadowing of the lad’s eventual death by
drowning in this very brook. ‘Hinunter’ (‘down under’)
is the realm of death, and the minor harmonies in
this passage are a distant presage of the tonality of
‘Trockne Blumen,’ in which the lad envisions his death
before enacting it.
Desperately in love with the miller maid, the lad sings
in Am Feierabend of his desire to impress her and his
despair when she bids good night to all the workers,
with no special notice of him. The commonplace male
fantasy of heroic physical exploits to attract a woman’s
attention is, he realises, impossible; Schubert, however,
indulges the fantasy and gives the lad the musical
musculature he so desires for his Hercules-at-the-mill
feats. This is the first song in which the lad’s emotions
change radically in the course of the song, and
consequently, it is the first song not unified by a single
pattern in the accompaniment. In Der Neugierige, the
youth pins his entire hopes for existence on the little
word yes, on reciprocity in love, but he cannot help
thinking of the word no at the same time. The first
two stanzas of Müller’s poem are, in Schubert’s design,
preparation and prelude for the exquisite cantilena we
hear as the lad begs his confidante, the brook, for an
answer – to no avail.
Ungeduld is one of the most virtuosic songs in a
cycle filled with considerable challenges for singer
and pianist alike. The lad is frantic to force reciprocated
love into being; his repeated assertions that his heart
belongs to her bespeak the underlying plea that she
must respond in kind. Mute in actuality, he imagines
every surface as a writing tablet for words he cannot
say aloud to her. Müller, who translated Elizabethan
literature, modelled this poem on a passage from
Edmund Spenser’s ‘Colin Clouts come home again’
of 1595, with both poets couching similar sentiments
in iambic pentameters: ‘Her name in every tree I will
endosse, / That as the trees do grow, her name may
grow,’ and so on. In Schubert’s setting, the strophic
Arrival at the Mill
In Halt!, the lad arrives at a mill, and we hear in
the piano introduction and thereafter a figure that
suggests the turning of the mill wheel. The lad
is unsure whether he should stop; the bright sun
beckons him onward, while the mill seems to invite
him inside. When he focuses his gaze on the cozy
house, we hear a hint of yearning and of darkness
(tragic passion lies in wait there), while the bright
external world brings back the exuberant tone at
the start of ‘Das Wandern’. Between this song and
11
Die schöne Müllerin
A Schubert Journey
The Genesis of the Poetry and the Music
Goodbye. I’m going home.’ The song ends in a silence
filled with denial of what she has just said and done.
Delusion and Aftermath
Schubert deleted three poems from the body of
Müller’s narrative in which we infer that the lad and
the miller maid make love before she throws him over
for the more macho hunter. With those poems omitted,
Schubert’s lad is deluding himself when he sings Mein
and claims that she is his. A heaven-storming surge
of emotional current collapses by the song’s end; he
can neither maintain the illusion that she belongs
to him nor give it up. The great 19th-century singer
Julius Stockhausen, the first to perform this cycle in
its entirety (and with Brahms accompanying), was
so struck by the vacillation between over-confidence
and doubt in this song that he described it in his diary
as ‘truly raving.’ The song that follows it, Pause, is a
hiatus between the highest peak of love-delusion and
the subsequent descent into tragedy and death. A
sophisticated paradox, it is a poem/song fashioned
from the inability – actually, the refusal – to write new
poems and sing new songs to the accompaniment of
his lute because the lad cannot bear the truth that
is the only possible subject of these songs. Schubert
registers the lad’s vacillation between the possibilities
of joy in love or sorrow in radical tonal shifts.
Morgengruß (a strophic song like ‘Ungeduld’ before
it and ‘Des Müllers Blumen’ after it) is a serenade that
begins with a preliminary bit of rehearsal. The piano
introduction starts with the little phrase to which the
lad then sings, ‘Good morning, lovely miller maid,’
as if he were trying out the tune in his mind before
uttering it aloud. He is too impatient to rehearse
beyond the first words of greeting, however, so he
neatly closes out the introduction in order to get to
the business at hand. At the end of the first stanza,
he sings over and over, ‘Then I must go away, then I
must go away, go away’; the enchained phrase could,
theoretically, go on and on into the eternity
of unchanging love the lad so desires.
In Des Müllers Blumen, the lad hails the brook as his
friend and adopts its arpeggiated voice as he once
again insists that the miller’s daughter is his. Schubert
begins the song with an enigmatic gesture he would
use again in the song ‘Frühlingstraum’ from his second
cycle to words by Müller - Winterreise - of 1827. From
a single mysterious octave in the bass, the notes of
the main chord rise two octaves into a daydream, a
fantasyland that the lad can dispose to his liking. This
is the only song that simply stops at the final syllable
of text, thus ending with the word ‘weinen’ (‘weep’)
resonant in the air. As the fantasy-tears of this song
are followed by real tears in Tränenregen, Schubert
pairs the two songs in the same key and begins the
10th song with a seemingly unprepared dissonance
that actually issues from the previous tuneful exercise
in illusion. For the first and only time in the cycle,
the lad and the girl are alone together, but they
say nothing; the lad fills the unbridgeable distance
between them with visions of the heavens contained
in the watery, erotic element that symbolises Death.
Just as in the myth of Narcissus, the miller lad both
sees his own reflection in the water and stares into
the face of Death. Seeing the lad’s tears of emotion,
the miller maid says (snippily): ‘There’s rain coming.
‘Pause’ shares the same key as Mit dem grünen
Lautenbande and the same imagery of the lute with
its green band. At the beginning of this second song
in the pair, we hear a sustained chord, the main chord
of the previous song: The lad is frozen in place with his
unanswered questions from the end of ‘Pause.’ The
miller maid is characterised here by graceful, elegant,
buoyant strains in Schubert’s best quasi-Mozartian
manner; the lad reports her words as sweetness-andlight become melody. He does not realise as yet that
she likes green so much because it is the green-clad
hunter’s color.
Tragedy Descends
The percussive writing for the piano in Der Jäger is
like nothing else in the cycle. This hunting song with
a difference begins with a brief snatch of canonic
12
In Trockne Blumen, the lad attempts to find a
meaning for good in his impending death. The
love for which he lays down his life will, he asserts,
eventually be reciprocated after all, will bloom in
the maiden’s heart after his death. But the vision of
love’s resurrection is not something he can sustain,
and the illusion dies after the words cease; in the
piano postlude, we hear all vitality drain away, and
depression and darkness resume their sway.
imitation that gives away to martellato pounding.
Schubert understood that the lad wishes to chase the
hunter away, but feels himself unable to do so and
therefore does not continue the chase beyond a few
measures. This is panic: In Schubert’s hands, the lad
spits out these adrenaline-driven phrases with hardly
any leeway for breath, the singer thereby forced to
enact the physical manifestations of jealous rage.
Anger impels a rush of words in Eifersucht und Stolz,
a tirade in hexameters as the lad bids the brook
castigate the maid for her ‘fast, wanton, petty
fickleness;’ the song is a psychologically acute study
of a distraught person’s changes of mind, of the way
competing claims of jealousy and pride push one now
this way, now that. At the end, he engages in painful
self-mockery when he bids the stream deploy reverse
psychology and tell the maid that the lad now plays
merry songs and dances for children. The ‘pretty
dances and songs’ are songs of the lad and the girl
in happier times, to be sung to ‘children.’ Only children,
he implies, believe in faithful love, and he is no longer
a child.
Der Müller und der Bach is an inner debate of life
versus death in which the brook, the voice of Nature,
argues for continued life and the miller for death.
Looking for meaning in death, the lad speaks in
symbols: The stars of love that are either hidden in
clouds or newly apparent, the withered or eternally
blossoming flowers, the angels who weep in heaven
or move among us in human form on earth, the mystic
number three, the roses of love, and the paired colours
red and white — the red of passion, pain, and blood,
and the lily white of innocence. At the end, the youth
imagines death as a letting-go, life dissolving into a
flood of music.
In the End
Die liebe Farbe, a weary pursuit of Death, is a
variation of the chasse d’amour: now the lad, too, can
become a hunter. Here, he contemplates a death that
is the mirror image of Ophelia’s; the weeping willows,
cypress, and rosemary that ring her watery grave grow
again in his imagination. Throughout the three stanzas
of this vision of death, we hear an incessant funeral
tocsin on the same pitch.
Neither Müller nor Schubert allows tragedy to have
the last word. In the final song, Des Baches Wiegenlied,
the brook that has been the boy’s confidante
throughout the cycle sings an exquisite lullaby. It was
the custom in 1820s Vienna for parish churches to ring
the Zügenglöcklein, the ‘passing bell,’ when one of their
parishioners was dying so that all who heard it might
pray for the person’s soul, and Schubert accordingly
rings the passing bell in the outermost tones of the
right-hand part. A majestic spiritual vision unfolds at
the close, invoked by the brook in whose depths the
lad lies dying. In the final line of the cycle, when it tells
of the full moon rising into the heavens, dispelling the
mist symbolic of all that evades our understanding in
this life, it insists upon the ultimate victory of harmony
and beauty in the realm of the infinite.
Die böse Farbe is in extreme contrast to the
funeral knell before it. Here, a succession of frantic,
futile desires couched in the subjunctive impels a
masterpiece of seeming disjunction. At the word
totenbleich, ‘deathly white,’ Schubert sends the vocal
line jolting upward in shock for the last syllable: The
lad realises a split-second after he sings toten- that he
is actually contemplating his own death. The nearness
of death and thoughts of the hunter impel a brush
with the outer fringes of insanity before he recovers
his lyrical balance for the final farewell.
Susan Youens
Reprinted with permission. © 2014 The Carnegie Hall Corporation
13
Die schöne Müllerin
A Schubert Journey
repetitions are the register of obsession, of an idée
fixe with the beautiful miller maid, and so too are the
refrains that vault into the stratosphere. There are arias
with fewer climactic high pitches than this small song.
The Lovely Miller-Girl
Ein Zyklus von Liedern
von Wilhelm Müller (1794–1827)
A cycle of songs to poems
by Wilhelm Müller (1794–1827)
Das Wandern
Das Wandern ist des Müllers Lust,
das Wandern!
Das muß ein schlechter Müller sein,
dem niemals fiel das Wandern ein,
das Wandern.
To Wander
Wandering is a miller’s pleasure,
wandering!
He wouldn’t be much of a miller
who never thought of wandering,
wandering!
Vom Wasser haben wir’s gelernt,
vom Wasser!
Das hat nicht Rast bei Tag und Nacht,
ist stets auf Wanderschaft bedacht,
das Wasser.
We have learned it from water,
from water!
Which rests neither day nor night,
ever intent on wandering,
water!
Das sehn wir auch den Rädern ab,
den Rädern!
Die gar nicht gerne stille stehn,
die sich mein Tag nicht müde drehn,
die Räder.
We have also learned it from mill-wheels,
from mill-wheels!
Which do not like to stay still at all,
and never tire of turning,
mill-wheels.
Die Steine selbst, so schwer sie sind,
die Steine!
Sie tanzen mit den muntern Reihn
und wollen gar noch schneller sein,
die Steine.
Even mill-stones, heavy as they are,
mill-stones!
They join in the merry round-dance
and want to go even faster,
mill-stones.
O Wandern, Wandern, meine Lust,
O Wandern!
Herr Meister und Frau Meisterin,
laßt mich in Frieden weiter ziehn
und wandern.
O wandering, wandering, my pleasure,
O wandering!
Master and Mistress,
let me move on in peace,
and go wandering.
Wohin?
Ich hört’ ein Bächlein rauschen
wohl aus dem Felsenquell,
hinab zum Tale rauschen
so frisch und wunderhell.
Where to?
I heard a little stream rushing,
springing from the rocks,
rushing down to the valley,
so fresh and wonderfully clear.
Ich weiß nicht, wie mir wurde,
nicht, wer den Rat mir gab,
ich mußte auch hinunter
mit meinem Wanderstab.
I do not know what came over me,
nor who prompted me,
but I had to go down at once
with my staff in hand.
Hinunter und immer weiter,
und immer dem Bache nach,
und immer frischer rauschte
und immer heller der Bach.
Down and ever onwards,
always following the stream,
and ever fresher the stream rushed on,
and ever clearer.
14
Ist das denn meine Straße?
O Bächlein, sprich, wohin?
Du hast mit deinem Rauschen
mir ganz berauscht den Sinn.
Is this then my path?
O little stream, tell me, where are you going?
Your rushing sound
has quite dazed my senses.
Was sag’ ich denn vom Rauschen?
Das kann kein Rauschen sein:
Es singen wohl die Nixen
tief unten ihren Reihn.
Why do I speak of a rushing sound?
That’s not what it is:
it is the water-nymphs
singing their roundelay deep below.
Laß singen, Gesell, laß rauschen,
und wandre fröhlich nach.
Es gehn ja Mühlenräder
in jedem klaren Bach.
Let them sing, my friend, let the stream rush,
and follow merrily.
Mill-wheels turn
in every clear stream.
Halt!
Eine Mühle seh’ ich blinken
aus den Erlen heraus,
durch Rauschen und Singen
bricht Rädergebraus.
Ei willkommen, ei willkommen,
süßer Mühlengesang!
Und das Haus, wie so traulich!
Und die Fenster, wie blank!
Und die Sonne, wie helle
vom Himmel sie scheint!
Ei Bächlein, liebes Bächlein,
war es also gemeint?
Wait!
I see a mill sparkling
among the alder trees,
through the rushing and singing
comes the roar of the wheels.
Ah! welcome, welcome,
sweet song of the mill!
And the house, so snug,
and the windows, so gleaming!
And the sun, how brightly
it shines from the sky!
O little stream, dear little stream,
is this what it meant?
Danksagung an den Bach
War es also gemeint,
mein rauschender Freund?
Dein Singen, dein Klingen,
war es also gemeint?
Thanks to the Brook
Is this what it meant,
my rushing friend?
Your singing, your purling,
is this what it meant?
Zur Müllerin hin!
So lautet der Sinn.
Gelt, hab’ ich’s verstanden?
Zur Müllerin hin!
To the miller-girl!
That was the meaning.
Have I got it right, eh?
To the miller-girl!
Hat sie dich geschickt?
Oder hast mich berückt?
Das möcht’ ich noch wissen,
ob sie dich geschickt.
Did she send you?
Or have you led me astray?
I would really like to know
if she sent you.
15
Please turn pages with care to minimise noise
Die schöne Müllerin
A Schubert Journey
Die schöne Müllerin
A Schubert Journey
Now, be that as it may,
I will give in to you:
I have found what I was looking for,
whatever it may be.
Nach Arbeit ich frug,
nun hab’ ich genug,
für die Hände, fürs Herze
vollauf genug!
I asked for work,
now I have plenty,
for my hands, for my heart,
more than plenty!
Am Feierabend
Hätt’ ich tausend Arme zu rühren!
Könnt’ ich brausend die Räder führen!
Könnt’ ich wehen durch alle Haine!
Könnt’ ich drehen alle Steine!
Dass die schöne Müllerin
merkte meinen treuen Sinn!
The Hour of Rest
If only I had a thousand arms to use!
If only I could turn the wheels as I roared!
If only I could waft through every grove!
If only I could turn every mill-stone!
So that the beautiful miller-girl
would recognize the truth of my heart!
Ach, wie ist mein Arm so schwach!
Was ich hebe, was ich trage,
was ich schneide, was ich schlage,
jeder Knappe tut mir’s nach.
Oh, why is my arm so weak!
No matter how I lift, how I carry,
how I chop, how I beat,
any apprentice could match me.
Und da sitz’ ich in der großen Runde,
in der stillen, kühlen Feierstunde,
und der Meister sagt zu allen:
Euer Werk hat mir gefallen;
und das liebe Mädchen sagt
allen eine gute Nacht.
And here I sit with all the others,
at the still, cool time when work is over,
and the master says to everyone:
I am pleased with your work;
and the darling girl wishes
everyone good night.
Hätt’ ich tausend Arme zu rühren! usw.
If only I had a thousand arms to use! etc.
Der Neugierige
Ich frage keine Blume,
ich frage keinen Stern;
sie können mir alle nicht sagen,
was ich erführ’ so gern.
The Eager Questioner
I do not ask the flowers,
I do not ask the stars,
none of them can tell me
what I really want to know.
Ich bin ja auch kein Gärtner,
die Sterne stehn zu hoch;
mein Bächlein will ich fragen,
ob mich mein Herz belog.
I am certainly no gardener,
the stars are too high up;
I shall ask my little stream
whether my heart has deceived me.
O Bächlein meiner Liebe,
wie bist du heut’ so stumm!
Will ja nur Eines wissen,
ein Wörtchen um und um.
O, stream of my love,
how silent you are today!
I only want to know one thing,
one little word, either for or against.
Ja heißt das eine Wörtchen,
das andre heißet Nein,
die beiden Wörtchen schließen
die ganze Welt mir ein.
O Bächlein meiner Liebe,
was bist du wunderlich!
Will’s ja nicht weitersagen,
sag, Bächlein, liebt sie mich?
‘Yes’ is one little word,
the other is ‘no’,
those two little words
contain my whole world.
O, stream of my love,
how strange you are!
I shall not tell anyone,
tell me, little stream, does she love me?
16
Ungeduld
Ich schnitt’ es gern in alle Rinden ein,
ich grüb’ es gern in jeden Kieselstein,
ich möcht’ es sä’n auf jedes frische Beet
mit Kressensamen, der es schnell verrät,
auf jeden weißen Zettel möcht’ ich’s schreiben:
Dein ist mein Herz und soll es ewig ewig bleiben!
Impatience
I’d like to carve it on the bark of every tree,
I’d like to engrave it on every pebble,
I’d like to sow it in every newly-dug bed with
cress seeds, which would soon let the secret out,
I’d like to write it on every scrap of white paper:
My heart is yours and will be yours forever!
Ich möcht’ mir ziehen einen jungen Star,
bis daß er spräch’ die Worte rein und klar,
bis er sie spräch’ mit meines Mundes Klang,
mit meines Herzens vollem, heißem Drang,
dann säng’ er hell durch ihre Fensterscheiben:
Dein ist mein Herz, usw.
I’d like to train a young starling
to say the words purely and clearly,
until he spoke them with the sound of my voice,
with the full, warm impulse of my heart;
then he would sing brightly at her window-pane:
My heart is yours, etc.
Den Morgenwinden möcht’ ich’s hauchen ein,
ich möcht’ es säuseln durch den regen Hain;
o leuchtet’ es aus jedem Blumenstern!
Trüg’ es der Duft zu ihr von
nah und fern!
Ihr Wogen, könnt ihr nichts als Räder treiben?
Dein ist mein Herz, usw.
I’d like to inspire the morning breeze with it,
I’d like to whisper it through the stirring grove;
If only it shone from every star-like flower!
If only their scent could carry it to her
from near and far!
Waves, is it only mill-wheels you can move?
My heart is yours, etc.
Ich meint’, es müßt’ in meinen Augen stehn,
auf meinen Wangen müßt’ man’s brennen sehn,
zu lesen wär’s auf meinem stummen Mund,
ein jeder Atemzug gäb’s laut ihr kund,
und sie merkt nichts von all dem
bangen Treiben:
Dein ist mein Herz, usw.
I’d have thought it was in my eyes,
that it could be seen in my burning cheeks,
that it could be read on my silent lips,
that every breath would loudly proclaim it to her;
and yet she notices nothing of all my
anxious passion,
My heart is yours, etc.
Morgengruß
Guten Morgen, schöne Müllerin!
Wo steckst du gleich das Köpfchen hin,
als wär’ dir was geschehen?
Verdrießt dich denn mein Gruß so schwer?
Verstört dich denn mein Blick so sehr?
So muß ich wieder gehen.
Good Morning
Good morning, my beautiful miller-girl!
Why do you hide your face,
as if something were bothering you?
Does my greeting so trouble you?
Does my gaze so disturb you?
Then I must leave.
O laß mich nur von ferne stehn,
nach deinem lieben Fenster sehn,
von ferne, ganz von ferne!
Du blondes Köpfchen, komm hervor!
Hervor aus eurem runden Tor,
ihr blauen Morgensterne!
Oh, just let me stand far away
and look up at your dear window,
from far away, from far away!
Little blonde head, come out!
Come out from your round doors,
blue morning stars!
Ihr schlummertrunk’nen Äugelein,
ihr taubetrübten Blümelein,
was scheuet ihr die Sonne?
Hat es die Nacht so gut gemeint,
daß ihr euch schließt und bückt und weint
nach ihrer stillen Wonne?
Dear eyes, heavy with sleep,
you little flowers, weighted down with dew,
why do you avoid the sun?
Was the night so good to you
that you close, nod, and weep
for its silent delight?
Nun schüttelt ab der Träume Flor,
und hebt euch frisch und frei empor
in Gottes hellen Morgen!
Now shake off the veil of dreams,
and look up, bright and clear,
into God’s bright morning!
17
Die schöne Müllerin
Nun, wie’s auch mag sein,
ich gebe mich drein:
was ich such’, hab’ ich funden,
wie’s immer mag sein.
A Schubert Journey
The lark is wheeling in the air,
and from the depths of my heart
love calls forth care and sorrow.
Des Müllers Blumen
Am Bach viel kleine Blumen stehn,
aus hellen, blauen Augen sehn;
der Bach, der ist des Müllers Freund,
und hellblau Liebchens Auge scheint,
drum sind es meine Blumen.
The Miller’s Flowers
By the stream there are many little flowers,
peeping with bright blue eyes;
the stream is a friend to the miller,
and my love’s eyes are bright blue,
so these are my flowers.
Dicht unter ihrem Fensterlein,
da will ich pflanzen die Blumen ein;
da ruft ihr zu, wenn alles schweigt,
wenn sich ihr Haupt zum Schlummer neigt,
ihr wißt ja, was ich meine.
Right under her little window
I will plant my flowers,
there you will call to her when all is quiet,
when she is falling asleep,
you know just what I mean.
Und wenn sie tät die Äuglein zu
und schläft in süßer, süßer Ruh’,
dann lispelt als ein Traumgesicht
ihr zu: Vergiß, vergiß mein nicht!
Das ist es, was ich meine!
Da gingen die Augen mir über,
da ward es im Spiegel so kraus;
sie sprach: Es kommt ein Regen,
ade! ich geh’ nach Haus.
Then tears ran from my eyes,
and the mirror’s surface became muddled;
she said: It’s going to rain.
Goodbye! I’m going home.
Mein
Bächlein, laß dein Rauschen sein!
Räder, stellt eu’r Brausen ein!
All’ ihr muntern Waldvögelein,
groß und klein,
endet eure Melodein!
Durch den Hain
aus und ein
schalle heut’ ein Reim allein:
Die geliebte Müllerin ist mein! Mein, mein!
Mine
Stream, leave your rushing!
Wheels, stop your surging!
All you merry little wood-birds,
large and small,
finish your songs!
In the grove,
up and down,
let just one rhyme ring out today:
My beloved miller-girl is mine! Mine, mine!
And when she closes her eyes
and is sleeping in sweet repose,
then whisper to her in her dreams:
Forget me not!
That is what I mean!
Frühling, sind das alle deine Blümelein?
Sonne, hast du keinen hellern Schein?
Ach, so muß ich ganz allein,
mit dem sel’gen Worte mein,
unverstanden in der weiten Schöpfung sein!
Bächlein, laß dein Rauschen sein, usw.
Spring, are these all the flowers you have?
Sun, can’t you shine more brightly?
Ah, then I must be quite alone
with that blissful word, mine,
and understood by nothing in all creation!
Stream, leave your rushing, etc.
Und schließt sie früh die Laden auf,
dann schaut mit Liebesblick hinauf;
der Tau in euren Äugelein,
das sollen meine Tränen sein,
die will ich auf euch weinen.
And, when she opens her shutters in the morning,
look up lovingly;
the dew in your eyes
will be the tears
I shall weep over you.
Pause
Meine Laute hab’ ich gehängt an die Wand,
hab’ sie umschlungen mit einem grünen Band —
ich kann nicht mehr singen, mein Herz ist zu voll,
weiß nicht, wie ich’s in Reime zwingen soll.
Interlude
I have hung my lute on the wall,
and have twined a green ribbon round it,
I cannot sing any more, my heart is too full,
I do not know how to force my feelings into verse.
Tränenregen
Wir saßen so traulich beisammen
im kühlen Erlendach,
wir schauten so traulich zusammen
hinab in den rieselnden Bach.
Der Mond war auch gekommen,
die Sternlein hinterdrein,
und schauten so traulich zusammen
in den silbernen Spiegel hinein.
Shower of Tears
We sat so intimately together
under the cool roof of alder,
together we looked down so intimately
into the murmuring stream.
The moon had risen,
followed by the stars,
together, they looked down so intimately
into the silver mirror.
Meiner Sehnsucht allerheißesten Schmerz
durft’ ich aushauchen in Liederscherz,
und wie ich klagte so süß und fein,
glaubt’ ich doch, mein Leiden wär’ nicht klein.
Ei, wie groß ist wohl meines Glückes Last,
daß kein Klang auf Erden es in sich faßt?
The most searing pain of my longing
I could breathe out in playful song,
and as I sang my plaints so sweetly and delicately,
I did not think my suffering slight.
Ah, how great is the burden of my happiness,
that no song on earth can contain it?
Ich sah nach keinem Monde,
nach keinem Sternenschein,
ich schaute nach ihrem Bilde,
nach ihrem Auge allein.
Und sahe sie nicken und blicken
herauf aus dem seligen Bach,
die Blümlein am Ufer, die blauen,
sie nickten und blickten ihr nach.
I was not looking at the moon,
nor at the shining stars,
I was looking at her image,
at her eyes alone.
I saw them dancing and looking up
from the blissful stream,
the little blue flowers on the bank
danced and looked up at her.
Nun, liebe Laute, ruh an dem Nagel hier!
Und weht ein Lüftchen über die Saiten dir,
und streift eine Biene mit ihren Flügeln dich,
da wird mir so bange, und es durchschauert
mich!
Now, dear lute, hang on that nail!
And if a breath of air passes over your strings,
or a bee brushes you with its wings,
I shall be so anxious, and a shudder will pass over
me!
Warum ließ ich das Band auch hängen so lang’?
Oft fliegt’s um die Saiten mit
seufzendem Klang.
Ist es der Nachklang meiner Liebespein?
Soll es das Vorspiel neuer Lieder sein?
Why did I let the ribbon dangle down?
It often skims against the strings with
a sighing sound.
Is it the distant echo of my love’s pain?
Is it to be a prelude to new songs?
Und in den Bach versunken
der ganze Himmel schien,
und wollte mich mit hinunter
in seine Tiefe ziehn.
Und über den Wolken und Sternen,
da rieselte munter der Bach
und rief mit Singen und Klingen:
Geselle, Geselle, mir nach!
And the whole sky
seemed submerged in the stream,
and wanted to draw me too
into its depths.
And over the clouds and stars
the stream murmured gaily,
singing in purling tones:
My friend, follow me!
Mit dem grünen Lautenbande
‘Schad’ um das schöne grüne Band,
daß es verbleicht hier an der Wand,
ich hab’ das Grün so gern!’
So sprachst du, Liebchen, heut’ zu mir;
gleich knüpf’ ich’s ab und send’ es dir:
Nun hab das Grüne gern!
Ist auch dein ganzer Liebster weiß,
With the Green Lute-riband
‘What a shame that the beautiful green ribbon
is fading here on the wall,
I like green so much!’
That is what you said to me today, my love:
I shall untie it straight away and send it to you:
Now the green ribbon is yours to enjoy!
Even if your loved one is all in white,
18
19
Die schöne Müllerin
Die Lerche wirbelt in der Luft,
und aus dem tiefen Herzen ruft
die Liebe Leid und Sorgen.
A Schubert Journey
green should still have some praise,
and I also like it.
Weil unsre Lieb’ ist immergrün,
weil grün der Hoffnung Fernen blühn,
dum haben wir es gern.
Nun schlinge in die Locken dein
das grüne Band gefällig ein,
du hast ja’s Grün so gern.
Dann weiß ich, wo die Hoffnung wohnt,
dann weiß ich, wo die Liebe thront,
dann hab’ ich’s Grün erst gern.
Because our love is evergreen,
because hope blooms green, in the distance,
that is why we like it.
Now twine the green ribbon
gracefully in your hair,
you like green so much.
Then I shall know where hope resides,
then I shall know where love is enthroned,
then I shall like green.
Der Jäger
Was sucht denn der Jäger am
Mühlbach hier?
Bleib, trotziger Jäger, in deinem Revier!
Hier gibt es kein Wild zu jagen für dich,
hier wohnt nur ein Rehlein, ein zahmes, für mich.
Und willst du das zärtliche Rehlein sehn,
so laß deine Büchsen im Walde stehn,
und laß deine kläffenden Hunde zu Haus,
und laß auf dem Horne den Saus und Braus,
und schere vom Kinne das struppige Haar,
sonst scheut sich im Garten das Rehlein fürwahr.
The Hunter
What is the hunter looking for here at the
mill-stream?
Stay on your preserve, headstrong hunter!
There is no game for you to hunt here,
there is only my little tame doe.
And if you want to see the gentle little doe
then leave your gun in the forest,
and leave your yelping hounds at home,
leave your horn’s clamour,
and shave the bristly hair from your chin,
or the little doe in the garden is sure to be afraid.
Doch besser, du bliebest im Walde dazu
und ließest die Mühlen und Müller in Ruh.
Was taugen die Fischlein im grünen Gezweig?
Was will denn das Eichhorn im bläulichen Teich?
Drum bleibe, du trotziger Jäger, im Hain,
und laß mich mit meinen drei Rädern allein,
und willst meinem Schätzchen dich
machen beliebt,
so wisse, mein Freund, was ihr Herzchen betrübt:
Die Eber, die kommen zur Nacht aus dem Hain
und brechen in ihren Kohlgarten ein,
und treten und wühlen herum in dem Feld;
die Eber, die schieße, du Jägerheld!
You would do better to stay in the forest
and to leave mills and millers in peace.
What would fish be doing in green branches?
What does a squirrel want in a blue pond?
So stay in the wood, you headstrong hunter,
and leave me alone with my three mill-wheels,
and should you want my darling to fall
in love with you,
then I shall tell you what is troubling her little heart:
The boars which come out of the wood at night
and break into her cabbage garden,
and trample and root about in the field –
those boars, shoot them, you hero among hunters!
Eifersucht und Stolz
Wohin so schnell, so kraus und wild,
mein lieber Bach!
Eilst du voll Zorn dem frechen Bruder Jäger nach?
Kehr um, kehr um, und schilt erst deine
Müllerin
für ihren leichten, losen, kleinen Flattersinn,
kehr um, kehr um, kehr um!
Jealousy and Pride
Where are you hurrying, so ruffled and wild,
dear stream!
Are you angrily chasing that brash hunter?
Turn back, turn back, and first of all scold your
miller-girl
for her flighty, loose, weak and fickle heart,
turn back, turn back, turn back!
Sahst du sie gestern abend nicht am Tore stehn,
mit langem Halse nach der großen Straße sehn?
Wenn von dem Fang der Jäger lustig zieht nach Haus,
da steckt kein sittsam Kind den Kopf zum Fenster
’naus.
Didn’t you see her yesterday evening at the gate,
craning her neck to see into the street?
When the hunter goes merrily home from the chase
no decent girl would stick her head out of the
window.
Geh, Bächlein, hin, und sag ihr das;
doch sag ihr nicht,
Back you go, my little stream and tell her that;
but don’t tell her –
20
hörst du, kein Wort, von meinen traurigen Gesicht;
sag ihr: Er schnitzt bei mir sich eine Pfeif ’ aus Rohr
und bläst den Kindern schöne Tänz’ und Lieder vor.
Sag ihr’s, sag ihr’s, sag ihr’s!
do you hear – don’t tell her a word
about my sad face!
Tell her: ‘By my banks he cut himself
a reed pipe
and is playing lovely dances and tunes
for the children.’
Tell her that, tell her that, tell her that!
Die liebe Farbe
In Grün will ich mich kleiden,
in grüne Tränenweiden:
Mein Schatz hat’s Grün so gern.
Will suchen einen Zypressenhain,
eine Heide von grünem Rosmarein:
Mein Schatz hat’s Grün so gern.
The Favourite Colour
I will dress myself in green,
in green weeping-willows:
my darling likes green so much.
I shall find a cypress-grove,
a heath of green rosemary:
my darling likes green so much.
Wohlauf zum fröhlichen Jagen!
Wohlauf durch Heid’ und Hagen!
Mein Schatz hat’s Jagen so gern.
Das Wild, das ich jage, das ist der Tod,
die Heide, die heiß’ ich die Liebesnot:
Mein Schatz hat’s Jagen so gern.
Grabt mir ein Grab im Wasen,
deckt mich mit grünem Rasen:
Mein Schatz hat’s Grün so gern.
Kein Kreuzlein schwarz, kein Blümlein bunt,
grün, alles grün so rings und rund:
Mein Schatz hat’s Grün so gern.
Away to the merry hunt!
Away through heath and thicket!
My darling likes hunting so much.
The game I am hunting is death,
the heath, I call love’s pain:
my darling likes hunting so much.
Dig me a grave in the sward,
cover me with green turf:
my darling likes green so much.
No black cross, no bright flowers,
green, nothing but green all around me
my darling likes green so much.
Die böse Farbe
Ich möchte ziehn in die Welt hinaus,
hinaus in die weite Welt;
wenn’s nur so grün, so grün nicht wär’
da draußen in Wald und Feld!
The Hated Colour
I would like to go out into the world,
out into the wide world,
if only it weren’t so green,
so green out there in the woods and fields!
Ich möchte die grünen Blätter all’
pflücken von jedem Zweig,
ich möchte die grünen Gräser all’
weinen ganz totenbleich.
I would like to pluck all the green leaves
from every twig,
I would like to bleach all the green grass
dead white with my tears.
Ach Grün, du böse Farbe du,
was siehst mich immer an
so stolz, so keck, so schadenfroh,
mich armen, weißen Mann?
Oh green, you hateful colour,
why do you look at me
so proudly, so boldly, so spitefully,
poor white man that I am?
Ich möchte liegen vor ihrer Tür,
in Sturm und Regen und Schnee,
und singen ganz leise bei Tag und Nacht
das eine Wörtchen Ade!
I would like to lie at her door,
in storms and rain and snow,
and sing softly day and right
that one small word, ‘Farewell!’
Horch, wenn im Wald ein Jagdhorn schallt,
da klingt ihr Fensterlein,
und schaut sie auch nach mir nicht aus,
darf ich doch schauen hinein.
When a hunting-horn rings out in the forest
you can hear her window open;
and even though she is not looking out for me,
I can still look in.
21
Die schöne Müllerin
soll Grün doch haben seinen Preis,
und ich auch hab’ es gern.
A Schubert Journey
Untie from your brow
the green, green ribbon,
Farewell, farewell! and give me your hand
as a sign of parting!
Trockne Blumen
Ihr Blümlein alle, die sie mir gab,
euch soll man legen mit mir ins Grab.
Wie seht ihr alle mich an so weh,
als ob ihr wüßtet, wie mir gescheh’?
Ihr Blümlein alle, wie welk, wie blaß?
Ihr Blümlein alle, wovon so naß?
Withered Flowers
All the flowers which she gave me,
you shall be laid with me in the grave.
Why do you all look at me so sadly,
as if you knew what had happened to me?
All you flowers, so faded, so pale?
All you flowers, why are you so wet?
Ach, Tränen machen nicht maiengrün,
machen tote Liebe nicht wieder blühn,
und Lenz wird kommen, und Winter wird gehn,
und Blümlein werden im Grase stehn,
und Blümlein liegen in meinem Grab,
die Blümlein alle, die sie mir gab.
Ah, tears do not bring back the greenness of May,
they do not make dead love blossom again,
and spring will come, and winter will go,
and there will be flowers growing in the grass,
and there will be flowers lying in my grave,
all the flowers she gave me.
Und wenn sie wandelt am Hügel vorbei
und denkt im Herzen: Der meint’ es treu!
Dann, Blümlein alle, heraus, heraus!
Der Mai ist kommen, der Winter ist aus.
And when she strolls past the mound
and thinks in her heart: ‘His feelings were true!’,
then, all you flowers, come out, come out!
May is here, winter is over.
Der Müller und der Bach
Der Müller
Wo ein treues Herze in Liebe vergeht,
da welken die Lilien auf jedem Beet,
da muß in die Wolken der Vollmond gehn,
damit seine Tränen die Menschen nicht sehn;
da halten die Englein die Augen sich zu
und schluchzen und singen die Seele zur Ruh’.
The Miller and the Brook
The Miller
When a true heart perishes for love,
then the lilies all fade in their bed,
then the full moon must hide in the clouds,
so that men may not see its tears,
then the angels cover their eyes,
and they sob, and sing the soul to rest.
Der Bach
Und wenn sich die Liebe dem Schmerz entringt,
ein Sternlein, ein neues, am Himmel erblinkt;
da springen drei Rosen, halb rot und halb weiß,
die welken nicht wieder, aus Dornenreis;
und die Engelein schneiden die Flügel sich ab
und gehn alle Morgen zur Erde herab.
The Brook
And when love tears itself free of sorrow,
a new star twinkles in the sky,
then three roses, half red, half white,
which will not fade, spring from the thorn-twig;
and the angels cut off their wings
and come down to earth each morning.
Der Müller
Ach Bächlein, liebes Bächlein, du meinst es so gut;
ach Bächlein, aber weißt du, wie Liebe tut?
Ach unten, da unten, die kühle Ruh’!
Ach Bächlein, liebes Bächlein, so singe nur zu.
The Miller
Ah, stream, dear stream, you mean so well;
but, stream, do you know what love can do?
Ah, down below, down below there is sweet repose!
O stream, dear stream, sing on.
22
Des Baches Wiegenlied
Gute Ruh, gute Ruh! Tu die Augen zu!
Wandrer, du müder, du bist zu Haus.
Die Treu’ ist hier, sollst liegen bei mir,
bis das Meer will trinken die Bächlein aus.
The Brook’s Lullaby
Rest well, rest well! Close your eyes!
Tired wanderer, you are at home.
Here you shall lie with me, where all is true,
until the sea swallows up the streams.
Will betten dich kühl auf weichen Pfühl
in dem blauen kristallenen Kämmerlein.
Heran, heran, was wiegen kann,
woget und wieget den Knaben mir ein!
I will put you down where it is cool on a soft pillow,
in the little room of blue crystal.
Come, come, all who can rock him,
sway and rock my boy to sleep!
Wenn ein Jagdhorn schallt aus
dem grünen Wald,
will ich sausen und brausen wohl um dich her.
Blickt nicht herein, blaue Blümelein!
Ihr macht meinem Schläfer die Träume so schwer.
When a hunting horn calls out from
the green forest,
I shall make sure to crash and roar around you.
Do not look in, blue flowers!
You trouble my sleeper’s dreams so.
Hinweg, hinweg von dem Mühlensteg,
hinweg, hinweg, böses Mägdelein,
daß ihn dein Schatten,
dein Schatten nicht weckt!
Wirf mir herein dein Tüchlein fein,
daß ich die Augen ihm halte bedeckt!
Away, away, from the mill-bridge,
away, away, wicked girl,
so that your shadow,
your shadow does not wake him!
Throw in to me your fine kerchief,
so that I may cover his eyes!
Gute Nacht, gute Nacht! Bis alles wacht,
schlaf aus deine Freude, schlaf aus dein Leid!
Der Vollmond steigt, der Nebel weicht,
und der Himmel da oben, wie ist er so weit!
Goodnight, goodnight! Until everything awakes,
sleep away your joy, sleep away your sorrow!
The full moon is rising, the mist is melting away,
and the sky up above, how far and wide it is!
Translation: Yehuda Shapiro
Reprinted with permission from Onyx Classics
23
Die schöne Müllerin
O binde von der Stirn dir ab
das grüne, grüne Band;
ade, ade! und reiche mir
zum Abschied deine Hand!
Program Night 2
Schwanengesang
Schwanengesang
Swan Song
Florian Boesch, bass-baritone
Malcolm Martineau, piano
Franz Schubert
Tuesday 7 July 2015
(b. Alsergrund, Vienna, Austria,1797 –
7.30pm, Elisabeth Murdoch Hall
d. Vienna, Austria, 1828)
This concert is being broadcast live on
ABC Classic FM
Schwanengesang, D.957: the Rellstab songs (1828)
Text by Ludwig Rellstab (1799-1860)
I
Liebesbotschaft (Love’s message)
II
Frühlingssehnsucht (Spring longing)
III
Ständchen (Serenade)
IV
Abschied (Farewell)
V
In der Ferne (Far away)
VI
Aufenthalt (Resting place)
VII Kriegers Ahnung (Warrior’s foreboding)
Schwanengesang, D.957: the Heine songs (1828)
Illustrated pre-concert talk by Songmakers
Australia (6pm – 7pm, Salon)
Text by Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
We always wonder what a genius like Schubert
could have written if he had a few more years
to live. But the biggest question is: would it be
possible to write anything after this? Not really
a song cycle but rather a collection published
by Schubert’s friends after his death, the depth
and grandeur of the poems makes it the equal
of the previous cycles but it’s the heartbreaking
beauty of the music that makes it one of the
pinnacles of vocal music of all times. This talk will
be illustrated with one of Schubert’s most famous
songs written during the last weeks of his life.
24
25
I
Das Fischermädchen (The fishermaiden)
II
Am Meer (By the sea)
III Ihr Bild (Her likeness)
IV
Die Stadt (The town)
V
Der Doppelgänger (The wraith)
VI
Der Atlas (Atlas)
Schwanengesang
Duration: One hour & 10 mins, no interval
you’ can liberate the springtime in the lover’s heart. As
so often in Schubert, insistent dactyls bespeak the
workings of Nature and desire. In Schubert’s
harmonies and touches of darkness at the end,
we realise that the persona cannot yet trust
in the beloved’s reciprocity, that doubt is
everywhere evident.
Schubert may well have received the 10 poems by
Ludwig Rellstab that he set to music from manuscript
copies given him by Beethoven’s secretary Anton
Schindler in the summer of 1827, after Beethoven’s
death on March 26th of that year. Schindler was
notoriously unreliable in his reminiscences, but
Rellstab confirms the anecdote in his memoirs. Seven
of the 10 songs were included in the compilation
entitled Schwanengesang (Swan Song) – Greek
mythology tells us that the swan sings its most
glorious song before dying – published by the
Viennese firm of Tobias Haslinger in the spring of
1829, after Schubert’s death on November 19, 1828. It
is proper to treat them as a set, just as our performers
are doing, because evidence suggests that Schubert
planned to publish them together; in this way, we can
appreciate the ‘Rellstab style’ – expansive and lyrical.
In the famous Ständchen, an ardent wooer – Rellstab
hints that he is a roué – attempts to lure the maiden
he desires out of her bedchamber by night in order
‘to make me fortunate,’ a euphemism only the most
naive, convent-bred Fräulein could mistake. Schubert,
while acknowledging the heart of darkness in this
scenario, fills his song of seduction with vulnerability,
uncertainty, and ambivalence, with all of eroticism’s
mixed moods and messages. We have the obligatory
guitar – or lute – mimicry in the piano and the
equally obligatory ornaments in the vocal line, like
a Neapolitan boatman imbuing ‘O sole mio’ with an
extra dash of fervour, but the exquisite melody is as
much melancholy as it is ardent, until the sudden
surge of dramatic fervour near the end. When the
impassioned plea gives way to the piano postlude, we
realise that this was a serenade in vain.
The Rellstab Songs
In the first of the Rellstab songs, Liebesbotschaft
(Love’s Messages), the lover bids the little brook
to convey greetings to the distant beloved. This is
Schubert’s final essay in water music, of which there
are many beautiful specimens in his oeuvre; here, a
gently rippling, undulating right hand part flows over
a bedrock of open fifths in the left hand and then
cradles a vocal line remarkable for its melodic beauty
and incessant dactylic rhythms (a longer note/syllable
followed by two shorter notes/syllables). One can hear
the fervour of the lover’s longing in the unforgettable
vocal gesture – a bounding leap upwards of a tenth,
both ebullient and a touch desperate – at the end
of the first and last stanzas; Schubert’s occasional
injection of melancholy, darker minor harmonies into
the water music bespeaks a touch of sadness.
From ‘Erlkönig’ to Abschied (Parting), horses
ride through Schubert’s songs, and this pianistic
steed carries the persona through what seems a
paradoxically happy farewell. But the merry tone is,
we come to realise, willed. In the E-flat major key of
Beethoven’s Les Adieux piano sonata, Op.81a (in the
song’s original tonality), the persona bids a protracted
farewell to a place he clearly loves and does not want
to leave. When Schubert veils the song momentarily
in a different key near the end, at the words ‘Ade! ihr
Sterne, verhüllet euch grau!’, we hear the persona’s
cloaked suffering peer through the clip-clopping
determination to be of stout mind about departure.
At the start of Frühlingssehnsucht, one hears soft,
thrumming excitement to tell of springtime’s arrival, of
rising sap and rising desire: this is a perpetual motion
song, but with fermata-sustained pauses that tell of
inner impasse before the gently urgent triplets resume
their motion. Each of the first four stanzas ends with a
questioning refrain – ‘Where to? Downwards? Why?
And you?’ – while the final stanza is the answer: ‘only
End-stopped lines, a barrage of present participles, a
bizarre combination of floridity and clipped utterance
in litany-like fashion (a Byronic anti-litany, perhaps):
Rellstab’s words for In der Ferne are not great poetry
by anyone’s reckoning. But Schubert found in this
26
suicidal mind challenging all of Nature and the cosmos
the stuff of massive musical maneuvers: the jolt of
a semitone downwards at the words ‘Mutterhaus
Hassenden’ would not become standard practice until
Wagner, post-1850. At the end, at the words ‘Welt
hinaus ziehenden,’ Schubert sounds a Neapolitan
chord (a harmony on the lowered second degree of
the scale) as part of the final, forceful strains; this is
always a strong gesture in music, and it is a signature
Schubert mannerism.
poetry for publication in 1827 as the Buch der Lieder
(Book of Songs), a literary best-seller. Schubert, who
seized upon new sources of poetry for song, chose
only six poems from Heine’s The Homecoming,
in which a newly corrosive, ironic voice appears
on the European literary scene. But Baron
Carl von Schönstein (1796-1876), the dedicatee
of Die schöne Müllerin, wrote that when he spotted
Heine’s Buch der Lieder in Schubert’s room and asked
whether he could borrow the volume, Schubert gave
it to him, saying that he ‘had no more need for it.’
The six Heine songs he did compose are a quantum
leap into the future of music.
In the palindrome-shaped Aufenthalt, we hear twoagainst-three rhythmic patterns much of the way;
this rhythmic conflict is emblematic of the persona’s
anguished analogies between his grief and surging
river, roaring forest, and immutable rock. What the
cause of such acute emotional distress might be,
we are not told.
In Das Fischermädchen, Janus sings a barcarolle. On
the surface, a buoyant, charming persona, confident
of his powers of attraction, woos a lower-class girl
with his pearls of song. The poet’s three verses are
set to the same music (with a few details varied),
but the middle stanza is transposed suddenly to an
unexpected place; he sings of drawing closer to the
beloved from an abruptly distanced vantage point.
One can interpret this song as a sincere serenade or
as mockery, with Schubert hinting that the persona is
not quite the genius he proclaims himself to be. The
ambiguities of song are on display here.
The beloved’s dreams, lulled by the murmuring
waters, give way to an unknown, unnamed warrior’s
nocturnal campfire memories of bygone dreams at his
sweetheart’s breast in Kriegers Ahnung; something
in his noble gravity suggests high-born knights of
yore. Schubert, anticipating Gustav Mahler’s obsession
with nocturnal battleground scenes, draws a stark
contrast between the columnar, dark, double-dotted
block chords that tell of the man’s death-haunted
present and the warm, fluid passage in major mode
that tells of a past beautified by love. The way in which
Schubert melts from the rich strains of love to the
words ‘Here, where the somber glimmer of the flames,
alas, plays only on weapons’ is emblematic of this
composer’s ability to go between distant tonal worlds
with uncanny ease, to slip from one realm to another
as if by sleight-of-hand.
In one summation, what we hear in Am Meer is an
erotic catastrophe in which a couple makes love by the
seashore, she weeps symbolic tears, and he declares
himself destroyed by the experience. Schubert would
have read this poem against the backdrop of his
syphilitic infection in late 1822 or early 1823; he knew
what it was to be poisoned by sex. In his setting, he
contrasts solemn, hymn-like stanzas with quivering,
trembling passages in a darkened minor mode.
Ultimately, Schubert tries to assert the sanctity of life
and love, whatever poison love might bring; the final
section of the song is a battle to keep darkness from
wholly overwhelming the memory of past beauty.
The Heine Songs
Late in Schubert’s life, the composer and his friends
revived their former reading circle and, on January 12,
1828, met to discuss the ‘travel ideas of Heine,’
perhaps the 1826 Reisebilder (Travel Images),
which includes the gigantic poetic cycle Die Heimkehr
(The Homecoming). The year after the travel sketches
appeared, Heine gathered together his youthful
The persona of Ihr Bild stares at an image of the
sweetheart, who has left him or died (Schubert
thought it was the latter), and fancies that the image
comes to life. This is classic Narcissus imagery, in which
27
Schwanengesang
A Schubert Journey
A Posthumous Collection
Nacht in alter Zeit,’ (‘so many a night, so long ago’) in
his own song ‘Herbstgefühl’.
Heine’s Byronic Titan makes melodramatic mock of
immense misery in Der Atlas; this Atlas has wagered
on undefined eternal happiness or eternal misery
and has lost the dare. What gripped Schubert’s
imagination was the notion of being chained to
irrevocable horror and attempting in vain to break
free of it; he borrows the circular figure in the bass
from Beethoven’s last piano sonata, Op.111 in C
minor, and chains his Atlas to it. In Beethoven’s wake,
Schubert was the new Titan of music, and he too
had an irrevocable burden of terminal illness to bear.
When his persona sings, ‘I bear the unbearable,’ he
cannot in fact bear it and wrenches violently away
from the G minor key of grief – but he cannot shake
loose his imprisonment in the repeated circular
figure. Packing so much sound-and-fury into a small
song is a challenge to all those who would denigrate
song composition as incapable of ambition on a
Beethovenian scale.
In classic horror movie fashion, the persona of
Die Stadt stares at mist and darkness until, finally,
daylight reveals – absence. The peopled place that is
this city is the mere hull or shell around a void where
the bygone sweetheart used to be. Schubert’s music
is divided into three compartmentalised segments,
distinct from one another and yet linked by a shared
obsession with the pitch we hear at the beginning. For
the first and third stanza, we hear echoes of the early
18th-century Baroque world of music, the passages
frozen in C minor, the rhythmic patterns reminiscent
of Handel or Rameau. In the introduction and second
stanza, the infamous ‘horror chord’ of German
Romantic opera comes virtually out of nowhere (as
does horror itself), goes nowhere, and is repeated over
and over. At song’s end, the single pitch C is isolated:
the most basic building block of music – one pitch – is
frozen in place as a declarative statement but of what,
to whom, why, and to what end are forever a mystery.
Susan Youens © 2015
Reprinted with permission. © 2014 The Carnegie Hall Corporation
The German Romantic writer Jean Paul was the first to
use the word ‘Doppelgänger’ in his novel Siebenkäs of
1796, but Heine’s text for Der Doppelgänger is among
its best literary manifestations by anyone’s calculation.
Like all ghosts, the double is both a historical figure, reenacting past times, and anti-historical, stepping out
of time; those who see their ghostly double become
unwilling voyeurs of their past selves. Schubert made
brilliant recourse to antique musical reminiscence
made modern for this scenario of lost time, past time,
and the present. In the piano introduction, we hear a
repeated harmonic ‘ground bass’ pattern of the sort
used as an organizing principle in music from the
sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries; here, it
sounds both antique and modern-dissonant-hollowspooky. The climaxes in this song are so shattering
that Johannes Brahms for one could not forget them:
he quotes Schubert’s final texted phrase, ‘So manche
28
Swan Song
Liebesbotschaft
Rauschendes Bächlein,
so silbern und hell,
eilst zur Geliebten
so munter und schnell?
Ach, trautes Bächlein,
mein Bote sei du;
bringe die Grüße
des Fernen ihr zu.
Love’s message
Murmuring brooklet,
so silver and bright,
is it to my love
you rush with such glee?
Ah, be my messenger,
beloved brook;
bring her greetings
from her distant love.
All’ ihre Blumen
im Garten gepflegt,
die sie so lieblich
am Busen trägt,
und ihre Rosen
in purpurner Glut,
Bächlein, erquicke
mit kühlender Flut.
All the flowers
she tends in her garden,
and wears with such grace
on her breast,
and her roses
in their crimson glow –
brooklet, refresh them
with your cooling waves.
Wann sie am Ufer,
in Träume versenkt,
meiner gedenkend
das Köpfchen hängt;
tröste die Süße
mit freundlichem Blick,
denn der Geliebte
kehrt bald zurück
When on your bank,
lost in dreams,
she inclines her head
as she thinks of me –
comfort my sweetest
with a kindly look,
for her lover
will soon return.
Neigt sich die Sonne
mit rötlichem Schein,
wiege das Liebchen
in Schlummer ein.
Rausche sie murmelnd
in süße Ruh,
flüstre ihr Träume
der Liebe zu.
And when the sun sets
in a reddish glow,
rock my sweetheart
into slumber.
Murmur her
into sweet repose,
whisper her
dreams of love.
Frühlingssehnsucht
Säuselnde Lüfte
wehend so mild,
blumiger Düfte
atmend erfüllt!
Wie haucht ihr mich wonnig begrüßend an!
Wie habt ihr dem pochenden Herzen getan?
Es möchte Euch folgen auf luftiger Bahn!
Wohin?
Spring longing
Whispering breezes
blowing so gently,
filled with the fragrant
breath of flowers!
How blissfully you greet me and breathe on me!
What have you done to my pounding heart?
It yearns to follow your airy path!
But where?
29
Please turn pages with care to minimise noise
Schwanengesang
A Schubert Journey
one looks obsessively at the beloved/oneself through
water – the tears in his eyes – and confuses subject
with object, person with thing. In this bleak song, shot
through with echoes that also bespeak the Narcissus
myth, the persona cannot really believe his loss: it is
the piano – made of sterner stuff – that tells us at the
end of irrevocable grief.
Schwanengesang D.957
The Rellstab Songs
A Schubert Journey
Silvery brooklets,
murmuring so bright,
cascade down
to the valley below.
The ripples glide swiftly that way,
reflecting earth and sky in their depths!
Why, longing desire, do you draw
me down?
The welcoming sun’s
glittering gold
sweetly brings
the bliss of hope.
Wie labt mich Dein selig begrüßendes Bild!
Es lächelt am tiefblauen Himmel so mild
und hat mir das Auge mit Tränen gefüllt! –
Warum?
How your rapturous greeting refreshes me!
It smiles so gently in the deep blue sky
and has filled my eyes with tears! –
But why?
Grünend umkränzet
Wälder und Höh’!
Schimmernd erglänzet
Blütenschnee!
So dränget sich Alles zum bräutlichen Licht;
es schwellen die Keime, die Knospe bricht;
sie haben gefunden was ihnen gebricht:
und du?
It wreathes in green
the woods and hills!
The snowy blossom
shimmers and gleams!
All things reach out for the bridal light;
seeds are swelling, buds are bursting;
they have found what they once lacked:
and you?
Rastloses Sehnen!
Wünschendes Herz,
immer nur Tränen,
Klage und Schmerz?
Auch ich bin mir schwellender Triebe bewußt!
Wer stillet mir endlich die drängende Lust?
Nur du befreist den Lenz in der Brust,
nur du!
Restless longing!
Yearning heart,
nothing but tears,
complaints and pain?
I too am aware of rising passion!
Who shall finally quell my longing?
Only you can set free the spring in my heart,
only you!
Ständchen
Leise flehen meine Lieder
durch die Nacht zu dir;
in den stillen Hain hernieder,
Liebchen, komm’ zu mir!
Flüsternd schlanke Wipfel rauschen
in des Mondes Licht;
des Verräters feindlich Lauschen
fürchte, Holde, nicht.
Serenade
Softly my songs plead to you
throughout the night;
come down to me, my love,
into the silent grove!
Slender treetops whisper
and murmur in the moonlight;
do not fear, my sweetest,
any lurking treason.
Hörst die Nachtigallen schlagen?
Ach! sie flehen dich,
mit der Töne süßen Klagen
flehen sie für mich.
Can you hear the nightingales call?
Ah! they are imploring you,
with their sweet and plaintive songs
they are imploring for me.
Sie versteh’n des Busens Sehnen,
kennen Liebesschmerz,
They understand the heart’s longing,
they know the pain of love,
30
rühren mit den Silbertönen
jedes weiche Herz.
they touch with their silver notes
every tender heart.
Laß auch dir die Brust bewegen,
Liebchen, höre mich!
Bebend harr’ ich Dir entgegen!
Komm, beglücke mich!
Let your breast too me moved,
listen to me, my love!
Quivering, I wait for you!
Come – make me happy!
Abschied
Ade, du muntre, du fröhliche Stadt, ade!
Schon scharret mein Rösslein mit lustigem Fuß.
Jetzt nimm noch den letzten, den scheidenden Gruß.
Du hast mich wohl niemals noch traurig geseh’n,
so kann es auch jetzt nicht beim Abschied gescheh’n.
Ade…
Farewell
Farewell, lively, cheerful town, farewell!
My horse is happily pawing the ground;
accept now my final farewell.
Never yet have you seen me sad,
nor shall you now at parting.
Farewell…
Ade, ihr Bäume, ihr Gärten so grün, ade!
Nun reit’ ich am silbernen Strome entlang,
weit schallend ertönet mein Abschiedsgesang;
nie habt Ihr ein trauriges Lied gehört,
so wird Euch auch keines beim Scheiden beschert.
Ade…
Farewell, trees and gardens so green, farewell!
Now I ride by the silvery stream,
my farewell song echoes far and wide;
you’ve never heard a sad song yet,
nor shall you now I’m leaving.
Farewell…
Ade, Ihr freundlichen Mägdlein dort, ade!
Was schaut Ihr aus blumenumduftetem Haus
mit schelmischen, lockenden Blicken heraus?
Farewell, you friendly maidens there, farewell!
Why do you gaze from flower-fragrant houses
with such roguish and enticing eyes?
Wie sonst, so grüß’ ich und schaue mich um,
doch nimmer wend’ ich mein Rößlein um.
Ade…
I greet you as always and turn my head,
but never again shall I turn back my horse.
Farewell…
Ade, liebe Sonne, so gehst du zur Ruh’, ade!
Nun schimmert der blinkenden Sterne Gold.
Wie bin ich Euch Sternlein am Himmel so hold;
durchzieh’n die Welt wir auch weit und breit,
ihr gebt überall uns das treue Geleit.
Ade…
Farewell, dear sun, as you sink to rest, farewell!
The stars now glitter in shimmering gold.
How I love you, little stars in the sky;
though we travel the whole world far and wide,
you always serve us as faithful guides.
Farewell…
Ade, du schimmerndes Fensterlein hell, ade!
Du glänzest so traulich mit dämmerndem Schein
und ladest so freundlich ins Hüttchen uns ein.
Vorüber, ach, ritt ich so manches Mal
und wär’ es denn heute zum letzten Mal?
Ade…
Farewell, little window gleaming so bright, farewell!
Your faint light has such a homely gleam,
which kindly invites us into the cottage.
Ah, I’ve ridden past so many a time,
and might today then be the last?
Farewell…
Ade, Ihr Sterne, verhüllet Euch grau! Ade!
Des Fensterlein trübes, verschimmerndes Licht
ersetzt Ihr unzähligen Sterne mir nicht;
darf ich hier nicht weilen, muß hier vorbei,
was hilft es, folgt ihr mir noch so treu!
Ade, Ihr Sterne, verhüllet Euch grau! Ade!
Farewell, stars, veil yourself in grey! Farewell!
You countless stars cannot replace
the little window’s fading light;
if I can’t linger here, if I have to ride on,
what use are you, however faithfully you follow!
Farewell, stars, veil yourself in grey! Farewell!
31
Schwanengesang
Bächlein, so munter
rauschend zumal,
wollen hinunter
silbern ins Tal.
Die schwebende Welle, dort eilt sie dahin!
Tief spiegeln sich Fluren und Himmel darin.
Was ziehst du mich, sehnend verlangender Sinn,
hinab?
Grüßender Sonne
spielendes Gold,
hoffende Wonne
bringest du hold.
A Schubert Journey
Far away
Woe to the fugitive,
who forsakes the world!
Who roams foreign parts,
who forgets his fatherland,
who hates his family home,
who forsakes his friends –
alas, no blessing follows him
on his way!
Herze, das sehnende,
Auge, das tränende,
Sehnsucht, nie endende,
Heimwärts sich wendende!
Busen, der wallende,
Klage, verhallende,
Abendstern, blinkender,
hoffnungslos sinkender!
The yearning heart,
the weeping eyes,
the endless longing,
the turning for home!
The seething breast,
the fading lament,
the glittering evening star,
sinking without hope.
Lüfte, ihr säuselnden,
Wellen sanft kräuselnden,
Sonnenstrahl, eilender,
nirgend verweilender:
die mir mit Schmerze, ach!
dies treue Herze brach –
grüßt von dem Fliehenden
Welt hinaus ziehenden!
You whispering breezes,
you gently ruffled waves,
you fleeting sunbeams,
you who never linger:
ah! send greetings to her who broke
this faithful heart with pain –
from the fugitive,
from one who forsakes the world!
Aufenthalt
Rauschender Storm,
brausender Wald,
starrender Fels
mein Aufenthalt.
Wie sich die Welle
an Welle reiht,
fließen die Tränen
mir ewig erneut.
Resting place
Thundering river,
raging forest,
unyielding rock,
my resting place.
As wave
follows wave,
so my tears
flow on and on.
Hoch in den Kronen
wogend sich’s regt,
so unaufhörlich
mein Herze schlägt.
As the high treetops
stir and bend,
so my heart pounds
without respite.
Und wie des Felsen
uraltes Erz,
ewig derselbe
bleibet mein Schmerz.
Like the rock’s
age-old ore,
my grief remains
forever the same.
Rauschender Strom,
brausender Wald,
starrender Fels
mein Aufenthalt.
Thundering river,
raging forest,
unyielding rock,
my resting place.
32
Kriegers Ahnung
In tiefer Ruh liegt um mich her
der Waffenbrüder Kreis;
mir ist das Herz so bang und schwer,
von Sehnsucht mir so heiß.
Warrior’s foreboding
In deep repose my brothers-in-arms
lie round me in a circle;
my heart’s so heavy, so afraid,
so afire with longing.
Wie hab’ ich oft so süß geträumt
an ihrem Busen warm!
Wie freundlich schien des Herdes Glut,
lag sie in meinem Arm!
How often have I dreamt sweet dreams,
resting on her warm breast!
How welcoming the fire’s glow seemed,
when she lay in my arms!
Hier, wo der Flammen düstrer Schein
ach! nur auf Waffen spielt,
hier fühlt die Brust sich ganz allein,
der Wehmut Träne quillt.
Here, where the flames’ sombre glow
plays merely, alas, on weapons,
here the heart feels quite alone,
a tear of sadness wells.
Herz! Daß der Trost Dich nicht verläßt!
Es ruft noch manche Schlacht. –
Bald ruh’ ich wohl und schlafe fest,
Herzliebste – Gute Nacht!
O heart, may comfort not abandon you!
Many a battle still calls.
may soon be at rest and fast asleep,
sweetest love – good night!
33
Schwanengesang
In der Ferne
Wehe dem Fliehenden
Welt hinaus ziehenden! –
Fremde durchmessenden,
Heimat vergessenden,
Mutterhaus hassenden,
Freunde verlassenden
folget kein Segen, ach!
auf ihren Wegen nach!
Das Fischermädchen
Du schönes Fischermädchen,
treibe den Kahn ans Land;
komm zu mir und setze dich nieder,
wir kosen Hand in Hand.
The fishermaiden
You lovely fishermaiden,
row your boat ashore;
come and sit down by my side,
hand in hand we’ll talk of love.
Leg an mein Herz dein Köpfchen,
und fürchte dich nicht zu sehr;
vertraust du dich doch sorglos
täglich dem wilden Meer.
Mein Herz gleicht ganz dem Meere,
hat Sturm und Ebb’ und Flut,
und manche schöne Perle
in seiner Tiefe ruht.
Lay your little head on my heart
and don’t be too afraid;
each day, after all, you trust yourself
fearlessly to the raging sea.
My heart’s just like the sea,
it storms and ebbs and floods,
and many lovely pearls
are resting in its depths.
Am Meer
Das Meer erglänzte weit hinaus
im letzten Abendscheine;
wir saßen am einsamen Fischerhaus,
wir saßen stumm und alleine.
Der Nebel stieg, das Wasser schwoll,
die Möwe flog hin und wieder;
aus deinen Augen liebevoll
fielen die Tränen nieder.
By the sea
The sea gleamed far and wide
in the last evening light;
we sat by the fisherman’s lonely hut,
we sat in silence and alone.
The mist lifted, the water rose,
the gull flew to and fro;
from your loving eyes
the tears began to fall.
Ich sah sie fallen auf deine Hand,
und bin aufs Knie gesunken;
ich hab’ von deiner weißen Hand
die Tränen fortgetrunken.
I watched them fall on your hand,
and sank down to my knees;
from your white hand
I drank away the tears.
Seit jener Stunde verzehrt sich mein Leib,
die Seele stirbt vor Sehnen; –
mich hat das unglücksel’ge Weib
vergiftet mit ihren Tränen.
Since that hour my body wastes,
my soul expires with longing;
that unhappy woman
has poisoned me with her tears.
Ihr Bild
Ich stand in dunkeln Träumen,
und starrt’ ihr Bildnis an,
und das geliebte Antlitz
heimlich zu leben began.
Her likeness
I stood in dark dreams,
and gazed at her likeness,
and that beloved face
sprang mysteriously to life.
Um ihre Lippen zog sich
ein Lächeln wunderbar,
und wie von Wehmutstränen
erglänzte ihr Augenpaar.
A smile played wondrously
about her lips,
and her eyes glistened,
as though with sad tears.
Auch meine Tränen flossen
mir von den Wangen herab –
und ach, ich kann es nicht glauben,
daß ich dich verloren hab’!
My tears too
streamed down my cheeks –
and ah, I cannot believe
I have lost you!
Die Stadt
Am fernen Horizonte
erscheint, wie ein Nebelbild,
die Stadt mit ihren Türmen
The town
On the distant horizon
the town with its turrets
looms like a misty vision,
34
in Abenddämm’rung gehüllt.
veiled in evening light.
Ein feuchter Windzug kräuselt
die graue Wasserbahn;
mit traurigem Takte rudert
der Schiffer in meinem Kahn.
Die Sonne hebt sich noch einmal
leuchtend vom Boden empor,
und zeigt mir jene Stelle,
wo ich das Liebste verlor.
A dank breeze blows and ruffles
the gloomy waterway;
with sad and measured strokes
the boatman rows my boat.
The sun rises once again,
gleaming from the earth,
and shows me that place
where I lost what I loved most.
Der Doppelgänger
Still ist die Nacht, es ruhen die Gassen,
in diesem Hause wohnte mein Schatz;
sie hat schon längst die Stadt verlassen,
doch steht noch das Haus auf demselben Platz.
Da steht auch ein Mensch und starrt in die Höhe,
und ringt die Hände, vor Schmerzensgewalt;
mir graust es, wenn ich sein Antlitz sehe, –
der Mond zeigt mir meine eigne Gestalt.
The wraith
The night is still, the streets are at rest,
this is the house where my loved-one lived;
she left the town long ago,
but the house still stands in the same place.
A man stands there too, staring up,
racked with pain, he wrings his hands;
I shudder when I see his face –
the moon shows me my own form.
Du Doppelgänger! du bleicher Geselle!
was äffst du nach mein Liebesleid,
das mich gequält auf dieser Stelle,
so manche Nacht, in alter Zeit?
You wraith! You pale companion!
Why do you ape the pain of love
that tormented me on this same spot,
so many nights in times gone by?
Der Atlas
Ich unglücksel’ger Atlas! eine Welt,
die ganze Welt der Schmerzen, muß ich tragen,
ich trage Unerträgliches, und brechen
will mir das Herz im Leibe.
Atlas
I, unfortunate Atlas! All the world,
the whole world of sorrow I must bear,
I bear what cannot be borne, and my heart
would break in my body.
Du stolzes Herz, du hast es ja gewollt!
Du wolltest glücklich sein, unendlich glücklich,
oder unendlich elend, stolzes Herz,
und jetzo bist du elend.
You proud heart, you willed it so!
You wished to be happy, endlessly happy,
or endlessly wretched, proud heart,
and now you are wretched.
Translation:
Richard Stokes from The Book of Lieder (Faber, 2005)
Reprinted with permission from Onyx Classics
35
Schwanengesang
A Schubert Journey
The Heine Songs
Program Night 3
Winterreise
Winterreise
Winter Journey
Florian Boesch, bass-baritone
Malcolm Martineau, piano
Franz Schubert
Wednesday 8 July 2015
(b. Alsergrund, Vienna, Austria,1797 –
7.30pm, Elisabeth Murdoch Hall
d. Vienna, Austria, 1828)
This concert is being broadcast live on
ABC Classic FM
Winterreise, D.911, Op.89
Duration: One hour & 5 mins, no interval
Like Die schöne Müllerin, Winterreise uses poetry
by Wilhelm Müller. The cycle takes us through a
grown man’s journey of desperation, madness,
regret and possibly death. The contrast with
the previous cycle is even more striking for it
was written during Schubert’s last year. The
depth of feeling is translated into the music with
great psychological insight, using composition
techniques that later on another tortured Lieder
composer, Hugo Wolf, will further develop. For
the musical illustrations we will travel back to
1814, the first of Schubert great years of song.
36
Gute Nacht (Good night)
II
Die Wetterfahne (The weathervane)
III
Gefrorne Tränen (Frozen tears)
IV
Erstarrung (Numbness)
V
Der Lindenbaum (The linden tree)
VI
Wasserflut (Torrent)
VII
Auf dem Flusse (On the river)
VIII
Rückblick (Looking back)
IX
Irrlicht (Will-o’-the-wisp)
X
Rast (Rest)
XI
Frühlingstraum (Springtime Dream)
XII
Einsamkeit (Loneliness)
XIII
Die Post (The Post)
XIV
Der greise Kopf (The grey head)
XV
Die Krähe (The crow)
XVI
Letzte Hoffnung (Last hope)
XVII Im Dorfe (In the village)
XVIII Der stürmische Morgen (The stormy morning)
XIX
Täuschung (Delusion)
XX
Der Wegweiser (The signpost)
XXI
Das Wirtshaus (The inn)
XXII Mut! (Courage!)
XXIII Die Nebensonnen (The false suns)
XXIV Der Leiermann (The organ-grinder)
37
Winterreise
Illustrated pre-concert talk by Songmakers
Australia (6pm – 7pm, Salon)
I
About the Music
von Wilhelm Müller. Die Winterreise. In 12 Liedern
(Wandering Songs by Wilhelm Müller. The Winter
Journey. In 12 Songs), published in the periodical
Urania: Taschenbuch auf das Jahr 1823 (Urania,
Pocketbook Anthology for the Year 1823). Schubert
discovered this source sometime in late 1826 or early
1827, as the order of the Urania poems corresponds
exactly to Part I of his setting—which he thought was
a complete work.
For some time Schubert appeared very upset and
melancholy. When I asked him what was troubling
him, he would say only ‘Soon you will hear and
understand.’ One day he said to me, ‘Come over
to [Franz von] Schober’s today, and I will sing
you a cycle of horrifying songs. I am anxious to
know what you will say about them. They have
cost me more effort than any of my other songs’
So he sang the entire Winterreise through to
us in a voice full of emotion. We were utterly
dumbfounded by the mournful, gloomy tone
of these songs, and Schober said that only one,
‘Der Lindenbaum,’ had appealed to him. To this
Schubert replied, ‘I like these songs more than all
the rest, and you will come to like them as well.’
In March 1823, 10 additional poems were published
in the Deutsche Blätter für Poesie, Literatur, Kunst und
Theatre (German Album-Leaves for Poetry, Literature,
Art, and Theater). At the third and final stage, the
complete cycle, with the addition of the last two
poems to be written (‘Die Post,’ or ‘The Mail-Coach,’
and ‘Täuschung,’ or ‘Delusion’), appeared in the
second volume of Müller’s collected poems, the
Gedichte aus den hinterlassenen Papieren eines
reisenden Waldhornisten II: Lieder des Lebens und
der Liebe (Poems from the Posthumous Papers of
a Traveling Horn-Player: Songs of Life and Love),
published in 1824 and dedicated to composer Carl
Maria von Weber. The title is Müller’s post-Romantic
‘send-up’ of as many Romantic motifs as he could cram
into one name.
About the Poet
Wilhelm Müller, born in Dessau near Leipzig in 1794,
was famous throughout the 19th century as ‘the
German Byron’ because he too was a philhellene,
someone who espoused the cause of Greek
independence from the Ottoman Empire. Müller’s
Griechenlieder (Greek Songs), published between 1821
and 1826, were among his best-known works, but he
also translated Christopher Marlowe’s Tragical History
of Doctor Faustus into German, edited 10 volumes
of 17th-century German poetry, and wrote novels,
novellas, and lyric poetry, some of it spiked with acid
commentary on Prussian politics. Throughout the late
19th century and most of the 20th, Müller was decried
as a trite and naive poet. Nowadays we recognise his
transformations of conventional themes as having
genuine depth and originality; Schubert certainly did.
The Genesis of the Music
According to Franz von Schober, Schubert discovered
the cycle in Schober’s library—when and which one
of the poetic sources, he does not say. Schober and
Schubert shared lodgings in the autumn of 1826,
after which Schubert lived alone from the end of 1826
until February 1827, when he once again moved in
with Schober.
Sometime in late 1826 or early 1827, Schubert began
setting the cycle to music; in early March 1827, he
invited his friends to hear the unveiling of new works,
but unaccountably failed to appear for the soirée he
himself had arranged. It is possible that Schubert’s
plans for the informal performance of his ‘completed’
work in March were overturned by his discovery of the
Waldhornisten poems and his realisation that his music
was not, in fact, complete.
The Genesis of the Poetry
The poetic work appeared in three stages, beginning
with the first 12 poems entitled Wanderlieder
38
The weather-vane, changing direction with each
changing breeze, is a traditional symbol for infidelity.
In Die Wetterfahne, we hear the vane whirling about,
the gusts of wind, and most of all, the wanderer’s
anger. The tears that come as if from nowhere and
freeze on his face in Gefrorne Tränen hint that
something even deeper than love’s betrayal is at the
heart of the psychological turmoil. The fourth song,
Erstarrung, exemplifies the tug-of-war between
reason and emotion in the first half of the cycle: He
searches frantically for mementos of her because he
knows that without them, her image will eventually
vanish from his heart.
The Song Cycle as Monodrama
Müller borrowed the subject of his cycle Die Winterreise
from the stockpile of standard Romantic themes – a
journey by an isolated, alienated wanderer with a
tragic finale in madness or death — and varied it in
original ways. (Schubert omitted the definite article
from his title for a stronger, starker effect.) These
poems constitute a monodrama, a work in which a
single character investigates the labyrinth of his or
her psyche in search of self-knowledge or escape
from psychological torment or both. What defines
monodrama is the exclusion of any other characters
and the obliteration of as much awareness on the
reader/listener’s part of the poet’s control as possible.
Whatever we know in this cycle, we know from the
wanderer’s point of view. There is no narrator, no plot,
no logical succession of events in the external world.
Instead, we spy on fleeting emotions and states of mind.
The linden tree in Der Lindenbaum is where lovers in
German literature traditionally have their rendezvous;
here, the wanderer remembers bygone happiness. The
rustling leaves seem to say, ‘Come to me and find rest’
– but the only way to be one with Nature is to die. The
wanderer resists and journeys onward.
In Wasserflut, he imagines rivers of tears flowing all
the way to her house, and in Auf dem Flusse, he asks
his heart whether living torrents flow beneath its
frozen crust. Grief continually ‘looks back’ at what is
lost, and that is what the wanderer does in Rückblick.
Twice in this cycle, Müller invokes the will-o’-the-wisp
or ignis fatuus, the ghostly light that appears in
bogs, swamps, and marshes. Here, the will-o’-thewisp is perhaps the girl who lured the persona into
the emotional chasm through which he meanders
aimlessly in Irrlicht. ‘I’m used to going astray,’ he sings:
For Schubert, whose syphilitic infection is believed to
have come from an encounter with a prostitute in late
1822, this poem perhaps had personal meaning.
We are never told the persona’s name, occupation,
upbringing, personal history, or appearance (except
that he has black hair and is therefore not elderly).
The lack of specificity underscores the interiority of
the cycle; if we know very little about the wanderer’s
external circumstances, we learn much more about his
inner life. Long before Freud, he knows that dreams
are wish-fulfillment fantasies, but, in his despair, he is
unable to resist the lure of the illusions by which we
comfort ourselves.
The wanderer pauses in his journey for the first time
in Rast, but the trudging footsteps continue in his
head. Finally falling asleep in Frühlingstraum, he
dreams of springtime and reciprocal love in strains
of Mozartean delicacy and clarity, only to be rudely
awakened to cold reality – not once, but twice. In the
wake of this experience, he feels even more solitary
and wretched than before. Schubert originally thought
that Einsamkeit was the ending and wrote Fine
(‘The End’) with a flourish after the final bar.
The Stages of the Journey
Before the journey begins, much has already happened
to this character. In the first song, Gute Nacht, he tells
us that he came to this place a stranger and departs
still a stranger, unsuccessful once more in his quest
for belonging. When he is jilted, he loses more than
the love of one person: he loses the hope that human
bonds are possible for him. Before he leaves, he
bids the sleeping sweetheart farewell; in Schubert’s
hands, Müller’s angry sarcasm at the end becomes
Die Post at the midway point re-energises the cycle
with its horn calls and clip-clopping horses’ hooves.
But thereafter, the wanderer longs repeatedly for
death; in Der greise Kopf, he hopes that the frost on
his hair means that he has grown old overnight and
39
Winterreise
A Schubert Journey
In an obituary notice for Schubert, who died on
November 19, 1828, at age 31, poet Johann Mayrhofer
said of Winterreise, ‘The poet’s irony, rooted in despair,
appealed to him: He expressed it in cutting tones.’ In
1858, another friend, Joseph von Spaun, wrote the
following in his Reflections and Notes on My Friendship
with Franz Schubert:
tenderness made audible in a magical shift from minor
to major mode. The repeated notes/chords in the piano
symbolise the journey and return at significant points
throughout the cycle.
Why Müller changed the ordering of his 24 poems at
the final stage is anyone’s guess, but Schubert could
not duplicate that order when he found the complete
poetic cycle without disrupting the musical continuum
already created. For his Fortsetzung, or Continuation
(Part II, the last 12 songs), he simply set the remaining
poems in order, beginning with ‘Die Post,’ although
he reverses the poet’s order of ‘Mut’ (‘Courage’) and
‘Die Nebensonnen’ (‘The Phantom Suns’) near the
end. Publisher Tobias Haslinger brought the work
out in two stages. Part I appeared in the summer of
1828, Part II after the composer’s death. According to
Haslinger and Schubert’s brother Ferdinand, Schubert
corrected the proofs for Part II after he took to his bed
in Ferdinand’s apartment on Kettenbrückengasse,
where he would die shortly afterwards.
which sun refracted through ice-crystals produces
illusory images of the sun on either side. Here, the
illusions symbolise the beloved’s eyes, which vanished
from his sight.
At the ‘end’ of the cycle (not truly an end) in
Der Leiermann, the wanderer sees a hurdy-gurdy
player, wordless, frozen, grinding out music so
obsessive and elemental as to be deprived of all
possibility of transcendence. This is living death,
and it is worse by far than physical extinction.
This spasm of despair is followed by scorn of sleepy
small-town values, of those deluded people who can
dream and hope for good things, unlike him. The
figures at the beginning of Im Dorfe can be heard
both as the dogs’ chains rattling and the villagers’
snoring; the wanderer’s renunciation of dream worlds
at the close as a musical ending reminiscent of the
Baroque era can be interpreted either wistfully or
angrily. The next morning, he sees the image of his
own heart in the storm-tossed clouds and fiery dawn
of Der stürmische Morgen, with its ‘military march’
middle section; the Lear-on-the-heath defiance is over
almost before we can take in such violence.
Postlude
When Schubert set these poems to music, he was
confronting his own probable fate. Enough was known
in the 1820s about syphilis for Schubert to realise
that this disease often led to dementia and paralysis
before release in death. He might have wondered as
he read Der Leiermann whether he too would be
condemned to suffer what the wanderer confronts:
a future with his creative faculties numbed and the
capacity to create music restricted to a single phrase,
repeated mindlessly over and over. The cycle ends on
a question mark for which there is no answer, only the
echoing silence following the dying-away drone of the
hurdy-gurdy.
For Täuschung, the second will-o’-the-wisp
song, Schubert borrows from his 1821-1822 opera
Alfonso und Estrella, where it told of a cloud-maiden
who lured a hunter to follow her until he tumbled to
his death far below. Here, the wanderer knows the
will-o’-the-wisp is delusory, but is so desperate for light
and warmth and company that he follows it anyway,
his music expressive of mad merriment.
Realising this, one understands what a heroic act it
was for Schubert to set this text, of all texts, to music,
to fashion transcendent art from the bleakest fear
imaginable. Perhaps Death, flattered by Schubert’s
many portraits of him in music, spared the composer
the fate he most dreaded, taking him swiftly before
insanity and paralysis could claim him as their own.
Despite the tragedy of his premature death (and we
will always wonder what might have been), we can
only be grateful that he did not become the wanderer,
but instead turned him into songs ‘I like better than
all the rest.’
The 20th song, Der Wegweiser, is the moment of
peripeteia, of recognition. As he asks yet again why
his road is so solitary and difficult, he sees a signpost
in his mind for the road he must take, a road ‘from
which no man has ever returned.’ He does not say
what it is – surely death – but we gather from the next
song, Das Wirtshaus, that it will take longer to arrive
than the wanderer would wish. When he stops at a
cemetery and begs for a room at the inn, he is turned
away by the ‘pitiless’ innkeeper Death;
he must continue his journey.
The false courage he tries to assemble in Mut!
quickly evaporates, followed by a song of profound
resignation: Die Nebensonnen. The mysterious
three suns could be Müller’s symbolic use of the
atmospheric phenomenon known as ‘parhelion’, in
Susan Youens
© 2014 The Carnegie Hall Corporation. Reproduced with permission.
40
Winter Journey
Nach Gedichten von
Wilhelm Müller (1794–1827)
Set to poems by
Wilhelm Müller (1794–1827)
Gute Nacht
Fremd bin ich eingezogen,
Fremd zieh’ ich wieder aus.
Der Mai war mir gewogen
Mit manchem Blumenstrauß.
Das Mädchen sprach von Liebe,
Die Mutter gar von Eh’, –
Nun ist die Welt so trübe,
Der Weg gehüllt in Schnee.
Good night
As a stranger I arrived,
As a stranger again I leave.
May favoured me
With many a flower bouquet.
The maid spoke of love,
Her mother even of marriage –
Now the world is so bleak,
The path covered by snow.
Ich kann zu meiner Reisen
Nicht wählen mit der Zeit,
Muß selbst den Weg mir weisen
In dieser Dunkelheit.
Es zieht ein Mondenschatten
Als mein Gefährte mit,
Und auf den weißen Matten
Such’ ich des Wildes Tritt.
I cannot choose the time
Of my journey;
I must find my own way
In this darkness.
The shadow of the moon
Will be my travelling companion
And on the white pastures
I’ll search for animal tracks.
Was soll ich länger weilen,
Daß man mich trieb hinaus?
Laß irre Hunde heulen
Vor ihres Herren Haus!
Die Liebe liebt das Wandern –
Gott hat sie so gemacht –
Von einem zu dem andern.
Fein Liebchen, gute Nacht!
Why should I linger further
And be driven out?
Let stray dogs howl
Outside their master’s house!
Love loves to wander –
God made it thus –
From one to another.
Dearly beloved, good night!
Will dich im Traum nicht stören,
Wär schad’ um deine Ruh’,
Sollst meinen Tritt nicht hören –
Sacht, sacht die Türe zu!
Schreib im Vorübergehen
Ans Tor dir: Gute Nacht,
Damit du mögest sehen,
An dich hab’ ich gedacht.
I will not disturb your dreaming,
It would be a pity to spoil your rest;
You shall not hear my footsteps –
Softly, softly close the door!
As I pass by I’ll write
‘Good night’ on the gate,
So that you may see
That I have thought of you.
Die Wetterfahne
Der Wind spielt mit der Wetterfahne
Auf meines schönen Liebchens Haus.
Da dacht’ ich schon in meinem Wahne,
Sie pfiff den armen Flüchtling aus.
The weathervane
The wind plays with the weathervane
On my lovely sweetheart’s house.
In my deluded state I thought
It was whistling at this poor fugitive.
Er hätt’ es eher bemerken sollen,
Des Hauses aufgestecktes Schild,
So hätt’ er nimmer suchen wollen
Im Haus ein treues Frauenbild.
He should have noticed it sooner,
This crest set above the house,
Then he would never have sought
A faithful woman in that house.
41
Please turn pages with care to minimise noise
Winterreise
A Schubert Journey
will soon die, and in Die Krähe, he hopes that the crow
circling overhead is a death-omen. Letzte Hoffnung
inspired Schubert to complex and disorienting
rhythmic patterns that tell both of an extremity of
despair and of leaves that fall from the trees at random.
Winterreise
A Schubert Journey
Inside the wind plays with hearts
As on the roof, though not so loudly.
What do they care for my suffering?
Their child is a wealthy bride.
Ich mußt’ auch heute wandern
Vorbei in tiefer Nacht,
Da hab’ ich noch im Dunkeln
Die Augen zugemacht.
Today, too, I had to pass it
In the dead of night.
And even in the darkness
I closed my eyes.
Gefrorne Tränen
Gefror’ne Tropfen fallen
Von meinen Wangen ab:
Ob es mir denn entgangen,
Daß ich geweinet hab’?
Frozen tears
Frozen teardrops fall
From my cheeks:
Has it not occurred to me
That I have been weeping?
Und seine Zweige rauschten,
Als riefen sie mir zu:
Komm her zu mir, Geselle,
Hier find’st du deine Ruh’!
And its branches rustled
As though calling to me:
‘Come here to me, friend,
Here will you find your rest!’
Ei Tränen, meine Tränen,
Und seid ihr gar so lau,
Daß ihr erstarrt zu Eise
Wie kühler Morgentau?
O tears, my tears,
Are you so lukewarm,
That you turn to ice
Like cool morning dew?
Die kalten Winde bliesen
Mir grad’ ins Angesicht;
Der Hut flog mir vom Kopfe,
Ich wendete mich nicht.
The chill wind blew
Straight in my face,
My hat flew from my head,
I did not turn back.
Und dringt doch aus der Quelle
Der Brust so glühend heiß,
Als wolltet ihr zerschmelzen
Des ganzen Winters Eis!
Yet you spring from a source,
My heart, so burning hot,
As if you wished to melt
All the ice of winter!
Nun bin ich manche Stunde
Entfernt von jenem Ort,
Und immer hör’ ich’s rauschen:
Du fändest Ruhe dort!
Now I am many hours
Away from that place,
And still I hear its rustling:
‘There you would find rest!’
Erstarrung
Ich such’ im Schnee vergebens
Nach ihrer Tritte Spur,
Wo sie an meinem Arme
Durchstrich die grüne Flur.
Numbness
I vainly search in the snow
For a trace of her footsteps,
When on my arm
She roamed in the green meadow.
Wasserflut
Manche Trän’ aus meinen Augen
Ist gefallen in den Schnee;
Seine kalten Flocken saugen
Durstig ein das heiße Weh.
Torrent
Many tears from my eyes
Have fallen onto the snow;
Its icy flakes drink thirstily
My burning pain.
Ich will den Boden küssen,
Durchdringen Eis und Schnee
Mit meinen heißen Tränen,
Bis ich die Erde seh’.
I want to kiss the ground,
Piercing the ice and snow
With my hot tears,
Until I see the earth beneath.
Wenn die Gräser sprossen wollen
Weht daher ein lauer Wind,
Und das Eis zerspringt in Schollen
Und der weiche Schnee zerrinnt.
When the grass begins to shoot,
A mild wind shall blow there,
And the ice break up into floes
And the snow will dissolve.
Wo find’ ich eine Blüte,
Wo find’ ich grünes Gras?
Die Blumen sind erstorben,
Der Rasen sieht so blaß.
Where shall I find a blossom,
Where shall I find green grass?
The flowers are dead,
The turf looks so pale.
Schnee, du weißt von meinem Sehnen,
Sag, wohin doch geht dein Lauf?
Folge nach nur meinen Tränen,
Nimmt dich bald das Bächlein auf.
Snow, you know my longing,
Say, which way will you flow?
Just follow my tears,
The brook will soon carry you away.
Soll denn kein Angedenken
Ich nehmen mit von hier?
Wenn meine Schmerzen schweigen,
Wer sagt mir dann von ihr?
Is there then no memory
To take with me from here?
When my torment is stilled,
Who will tell of her to me?
Wirst mit ihm die Stadt durchziehen,
Muntre Straßen ein und aus;
Fühlst du meine Tränen glühen,
Da ist meiner Liebsten Haus.
With it you’ll cross through the town,
In and out of bustling streets.
When you feel my tears burning,
There will be my beloved’s house.
Mein Herz ist wie erstorben,
Kalt starrt ihr Bild darin;
Schmilzt je das Herz mir wieder,
Fließt auch ihr Bild dahin!
My heart is as if dead,
Within it her image gazes coldly;
If my heart ever thaws once more,
Her image too would melt away!
Auf dem Flusse
Der du so lustig rauschtest,
Du heller, wilder Fluß,
Wie still bist du geworden,
Gibst keinen Scheidegruß.
On the river
You who raced along so merrily,
You clear, wild brook,
How quiet you have become,
You offer no parting words.
Der Lindenbaum
Am Brunnen vor dem Tore
Da steht ein Lindenbaum;
Ich träumt’ in seinem Schatten
So manchen süßen Traum.
The linden tree
By the fountain near the gate,
There stands a linden tree;
I have dreamt in its shadows
So many sweet dreams.
Mit harter, starrer Rinde
Hast du dich überdeckt,
Liegst kalt und unbeweglich
Im Sande ausgestreckt.
With a hard, unyielding crust
You have covered yourself.
You lie cold and motionless
Stretched out in the sand.
Ich schnitt in seine Rinde
So manches liebe Wort;
Es zog in Freud’ und Leide
Zu ihm mich immer fort.
I carved on its bark
So many loving words;
In both joy and sorrow
It drew me to it always.
In deine Decke grab’ ich
Mit einem spitzen Stein
Den Namen meiner Liebsten
Und Stund’ und Tag hinein:
Upon your surface I carve
With a sharp stone
The name of my beloved
And the hour and the day:
Den Tag des ersten Grußes,
The day of our first greeting,
42
43
Winterreise
Der Wind spielt drinnen mit den Herzen
Wie auf dem Dach, nur nicht so laut.
Was fragen sie nach meinen Schmerzen?
Ihr Kind ist eine reiche Braut.
A Schubert Journey
The day I went away:
Around name and numbers
A broken ring is entwined.
Es war zu kalt zum Stehen;
Der Rücken fühlte keine Last,
Der Sturm half fort mich wehen.
It was too cold to stand still;
My back felt no burden,
The storm helped to blow me along.
Mein Herz, in diesem Bache
Erkennst du nun dein Bild?
Ob’s unter seiner Rinde
Wohl auch so reißend schwillt?
My heart, in this stream
Do you recognize your own image?
Under your surface too,
Is there a surging torrent?
In eines Köhlers engem Haus
Hab’ Obdach ich gefunden.
Doch meine Glieder ruh’n nicht aus:
So brennen ihre Wunden.
In a coal-burner’s cramped hut
Have I found shelter.
But my limbs cannot rest,
So fiercely do their wounds burn.
Rückblick
Es brennt mir unter beiden Sohlen,
Tret’ ich auch schon auf Eis und Schnee,
Ich möcht’ nicht wieder Atem holen,
Bis ich nicht mehr die Türme seh’.
Looking back
A fire burns under the soles of my feet,
Although I walk on ice and snow;
I’ll not pause for a breath
Until the towers are out of sight.
Auch du, mein Herz, in Kampf und Sturm
So wild und so verwegen,
Fühlst in der Still’ erst deinen Wurm
Mit heißem Stich sich regen!
You too, my heart, in strife and storm
So wild and so bold,
Now in the silence do you feel
Your serpent that stirs and stings!
Hab’ mich an jedem Stein gestoßen,
So eilt’ ich zu der Stadt hinaus;
Die Krähen warfen Bäll’ und Schloßen
Auf meinen Hut von jedem Haus.
I have tripped on every stone,
So hurriedly did I leave the town;
The crows threw snowballs and hailstones
Onto my hat from every house.
Frühlingstraum
Ich träumte von bunten Blumen,
So wie sie wohl blühen im Mai;
Ich träumte von grünen Wiesen,
Von lustigem Vogelgeschrei.
Springtime Dream
I dreamt of bright flowers
Like those that bloom in May;
I dreamt of green meadows,
And of merry birdsong.
Wie anders hast du mich empfangen,
Du Stadt der Unbeständigkeit!
An deinen blanken Fenstern sangen
Die Lerch’ und Nachtigall im Streit.
How differently did you receive me,
You town of infidelity!
At your shining windows
The lark and nightingale vied in song.
Und als die Hähne krähten,
Da ward mein Auge wach;
Da war es kalt und finster,
Es schrien die Raben vom Dach.
And when the cocks crowed,
My eyes awoke;
It was cold and dark,
The ravens cawing on the roof.
Die runden Lindenbäume blühten,
Die klaren Rinnen rauschten hell,
Und ach, zwei Mädchenaugen glühten! –
Da war’s gescheh’n um dich, Gesell!
The round linden trees were in bloom,
The clear brooks babbled by,
And, ah, two maiden eyes were glowing! –
Then, my friend, you were done for!
Doch an den Fensterscheiben,
Wer malte die Blätter da?
Ihr lacht wohl über den Träumer,
Der Blumen im Winter sah?
But there on the window panes,
Who painted those leaves?
You may well laugh at the dreamer
Who saw flowers in winter!
Kommt mir der Tag in die Gedanken,
Möcht’ ich noch einmal rückwärts seh’n.
Möcht’ ich zurücke wieder wanken,
Vor ihrem Hause stille steh’n.
Whenever that day enters my mind
I wish to look back once more,
I wish I could stumble back
And stand silent before her house.
Ich träumte von Lieb’um Liebe,
Von einer schönen Maid,
Von Herzen und von Küssen,
Von Wonne und Seligkeit.
I dreamt of love requited,
Of a fair maid,
Of loving and of kisses,
Of bliss and happiness.
Irrlicht
In die tiefsten Felsengründe
Lockte mich ein Irrlicht hin:
Wie ich einen Ausgang finde,
Liegt nicht schwer mir in dem Sinn.
Will-o’-the-wisp
Into deepest clefts of rock
A will-o’-the-wisp lured me;
How I will discover a way out
Does not concern me much.
Und als die Hähne krähten,
Da ward mein Herze wach;
Nun sitz’ ich hier alleine
Und denke dem Traume nach.
And when the cocks crowed,
My heart awoke.
Now I sit here alone,
And ponder my dream.
Bin gewohnt das Irregehen,
’S führt ja jeder Weg zum Ziel;
Uns’re Freuden, uns’re Wehen,
Alles eines Irrlichts Spiel!
I am used to losing my way;
All paths lead to their destination;
Our joys, our sorrows,
Are all a will-o’-the-wisp’s game!
Die Augen schließ’ ich wieder,
Noch schlägt das Herz so warm.
Wann grünt ihr Blätter am Fenster?
Wann halt’ ich mein Liebchen im Arm?
I shut my eyes again,
My heart still beats warmly.
When will you leaves at the window go green?
When will I hold my beloved in my arms?
Durch des Bergstroms trock’ne Rinnen
Wind’ ich ruhig mich hinab,
Jeder Strom wird’s Meer gewinnen,
Jedes Leiden auch sein Grab.
Down the mountain stream’s dry course
I calmly wend my way.
Every stream will find the sea,
Every sorrow finds its grave.
Einsamkeit
Wie eine trübe Wolke
Durch heit’re Lüfte geht,
Wenn in der Tanne Wipfel
Ein mattes Lüftchen weht:
Loneliness
As a dark cloud
Drifts across clear skies,
When through the fir-tops
Wafts a gentle breeze:
Rast
Nun merk’ ich erst, wie müd’ ich bin,
Da ich zur Ruh’ mich lege;
Das Wandern hielt mich munter hin
Auf unwirtbarem Wege.
Rest
Only now do I notice how weary I am
As I lie down to rest;
Walking had sustained me
On that desolate road.
So zieh’ ich meine Straße
Dahin mit trägem Fuß,
Durch helles, frohes Leben
Einsam und ohne Gruß.
So I wend my way
Onward with heavy tread,
Through bright, happy life,
Alone and ungreeted.
Die Füße frugen nicht nach Rast,
My feet did not ask for rest,
Ach, daß die Luft so ruhig!
Ach, daß die Welt so licht!
Alas, the air is so calm,
Alas, the world is so bright!
44
45
Winterreise
Den Tag, an dem ich ging;
Um Nam’ und Zahlen windet
Sich ein zerbroch’ner Ring.
A Schubert Journey
When the tempests were raging,
I was not so wretched.
Die Post
Von der Straße her ein Posthorn klingt.
Was hat es, daß es so hoch aufspringt,
Mein Herz?
The Post
From the street a posthorn sounds,
What is it that makes you leap so,
My heart?
Die Post bringt keinen Brief für dich.
Was drängst du denn so wunderlich,
Mein Herz?
The post brings no letter for you.
Why do you leap, then, so wonderfully,
My heart?
Nun ja, die Post kommt aus der Stadt,
Wo ich ein liebes Liebchen hatt’,
Mein Herz!
But now the post comes from the town
Where once I had a true love,
My heart!
Willst wohl einmal hinüberseh’n
Und fragen, wie es dort mag geh’n,
Mein Herz?
Do you want to look across
And ask how things are there,
My heart?
Der greise Kopf
Der Reif hatt’ einen weißen Schein
Mir übers Haar gestreuet;
Da glaubt’ ich schon ein Greis zu sein
Und hab’ mich sehr gefreuet.
The grey head
The frost had sprinkled a white sheen
All over my hair;
I thought I was already grey-haired,
And that made me very glad.
Doch bald ist er hinweggetaut,
Hab’ wieder schwarze Haare,
Daß mir’s vor meiner Jugend graut –
Wie weit noch bis zur Bahre!
But soon it melted away,
My hair is black again,
And so I grieve at my youthfulness –
How long still to the funeral bier!
Vom Abendrot zum Morgenlicht
Ward mancher Kopf zum Greise.
Wer glaubt’s? und meiner ward es nicht
Auf dieser ganzen Reise!
Between dusk and first light
Many a head has turned grey.
Who would believe it? And mine did not
Throughout the entire journey!
Die Krähe
Eine Krähe war mit mir
Aus der Stadt gezogen,
Ist bis heute für und für
Um mein Haupt geflogen.
The crow
A crow came with me
From the town,
And from that moment on
It circles round my head.
Krähe, wunderliches Tier,
Willst mich nicht verlassen?
Meinst wohl, bald als Beute hier
Meinen Leib zu fassen?
Crow, strange creature,
Won’t you leave me be?
Do you soon intend
To seize my body as prey?
Nun, es wird nicht weit mehr geh’n
An dem Wanderstabe.
Krähe, laß mich endlich seh’n
Treue bis zum Grabe!
Well, it is not much further
That I wander with my staff.
Crow, let me finally see
Fidelity unto the grave!
Letzte Hoffnung
Hie und da ist an den Bäumen
Manches bunte Blatt zu seh’n,
Und ich bleibe vor den Bäumen
Oftmals in Gedanken steh’n.
Last hope
Here and there on the trees
May be seen many a coloured leaf,
And often I stand before the trees
Lost in my thoughts.
46
Schaue nach dem einen Blatte,
Hänge meine Hoffnung dran;
Spielt der Wind mit meinem Blatte,
Zittr’ ich, was ich zittern kann.
I look for that single leaf
And hang my hopes upon it;
If the wind plays with my leaf,
I tremble to my very core.
Ach, und fällt das Blatt zu Boden,
Fällt mit ihm die Hoffnung ab;
Fall’ ich selber mit zu Boden,
Wein’ auf meiner Hoffnung Grab.
And if the leaf falls to the ground,
Then so my hope falls with it;
And I, too, sink to the ground,
Weeping at the tomb of my hope.
Im Dorfe
Es bellen die Hunde, es rasseln die Ketten;
Es schlafen die Menschen in ihren Betten,
Träumen sich manches, was sie nicht haben,
Tun sich im Guten und Argen erlaben;
In the village
Dogs bark, their chains rattling;
People sleep in their beds,
Many dreaming of what they do not have,
Finding solace in both the good and bad.
Und morgen früh ist alles zerflossen.
Je nun, sie haben ihr Teil genossen
Und hoffen, was sie noch übrig ließen,
Doch wieder zu finden auf ihren Kissen.
And by morning everything has vanished.
But still, they’ve enjoyed their share,
And hope that what remains to them
Might still be found on their pillows.
Bellt mich nur fort, ihr wachen Hunde,
Laßt mich nicht ruh’n in der Schlummerstunde!
Ich bin zu Ende mit allen Träumen.
Was will ich unter den Schläfern säumen?
Bark me away, you wakeful dogs!
Let me not rest in the hours of slumber!
My dreaming is at an end.
Why should I linger among the sleeping?
Der stürmische Morgen
Wie hat der Sturm zerrissen
Des Himmels graues Kleid!
Die Wolkenfetzen flattern
Umher im matten Streit.
The stormy morning
How the storm has ripped apart
Heaven’s grey mantle!
Specks of clouds flutter
In weary conflict.
Und rote Feuerflammen
Zieh’n zwischen ihnen hin;
Das nenn’ ich einen Morgen
So recht nach meinem Sinn !
And fiery red flames
Flicker among them:
That is what I call a morning
Exactly to my taste!
Mein Herz sieht an dem Himmel
Gemalt sein eig’nes Bild –
Es ist nichts als der Winter,
Der Winter kalt und wild!
My heart sees in the sky
Its own image painted –
It is nothing but winter,
Winter, cold and savage!
Täuschung
Ein Licht tanzt freundlich vor mir her,
Ich folg’ ihm nach die Kreuz und Quer;
Ich folg’ ihm gern und seh’s ihm an,
Daß es verlockt den Wandersmann.
Delusion
A friendly light dances before me,
I follow it back and forth;
I follow it gladly and watch
How it leads the wanderer onward.
Ach! wer wie ich so elend ist,
Gibt gern sich hin der bunten List,
Die hinter Eis und Nacht und Graus,
Ihm weist ein helles, warmes Haus.
Ah! one that is wretched like me
Yields gladly to such garish trickery,
That beyond ice and night and horror,
Reveals a bright warm house.
Und eine liebe Seele drin. –
Nur Täuschung ist für mich Gewinn!
And within, a loving soul. –
Delusion is my only profit!
47
Winterreise
Als noch die Stürme tobten,
War ich so elend nicht.
A Schubert Journey
The signpost
Why do I avoid the roads
That the other travellers take,
To search out hidden tracks
Through snowbound cliff-tops?
Die Nebensonnen
Drei Sonnen sah ich am Himmel steh’n,
Hab’ lang und fest sie angeseh’n;
Und sie auch standen da so stier,
Als wollten sie nicht weg von mir.
The false suns
I saw three suns in the sky,
I stared at them long and hard;
They, too, stood staring
As if not wanting to leave me.
Habe ja doch nichts begangen,
Daß ich Menschen sollte scheu’n, –
Welch ein törichtes Verlangen
Treibt mich in die Wüstenei’n?
I have done nothing wrong
That I should shun mankind.
What is this foolish longing
Driving me into the wilderness?
Ach, meine Sonnen seid ihr nicht!
Schaut andern doch ins Angesicht!
Ja, neulich hatt’ ich auch wohl drei;
Nun sind hinab die besten zwei.
Ah, but you are not my suns!
Stare then into the faces of others!
Not long ago, I too had three;
Now the best two have set.
Weiser stehen auf den Straßen,
Weisen auf die Städte zu.
Und ich wandre sonder Maßen
Ohne Ruh’ und suche Ruh’.
Signposts stand along the roads,
Pointing towards the towns;
And I wander on and on,
Without rest and in search of rest.
Ging nur die dritt’ erst hinterdrein!
Im Dunkeln wird mir wohler sein.
But let the third one follow suit!
In the darkness I will feel better.
Einen Weiser seh’ ich stehen
Unverrückt vor meinem Blick;
Eine Straße muß ich gehen,
Die noch keiner ging zurück.
I see one signpost standing there,
Steadfast before my gaze.
One road must I take,
From which no one has yet returned.
Der Leiermann
Drüben hinterm Dorfe
Steht ein Leiermann,
Und mit starren Fingern
Dreht er, was er kann.
The organ-grinder
There beyond the village
Stands an organ-grinder,
And with numb fingers
He plays as best he can.
Das Wirtshaus
Auf einen Totenacker
Hat mich mein Weg gebracht;
Allhier will ich einkehren,
Hab’ ich bei mir gedacht.
The inn
To a graveyard
My path has brought me;
Here will I lodge,
I thought to myself.
Barfuß auf dem Eise
Wankt er hin und her,
Und sein kleiner Teller
Bleibt ihm immer leer.
Barefoot on the ice
He staggers to and fro,
And his little plate
Remains forever empty.
Ihr grünen Totenkränze
Könnt wohl die Zeichen sein,
Die müde Wand’rer laden
Ins kühle Wirtshaus ein.
You green funeral wreaths
Might well be the signs
That invite weary travellers
Into the cool inn.
Keiner mag ihn hören,
Keiner sieht ihn an,
Und die Hunde knurren
Um den alten Mann.
No one wants to hear him,
No one looks at him,
And the dogs snarl
Around the old man.
Sind denn in diesem Hause
Die Kammern all’ besetzt?
Bin matt zum Niedersinken,
Bin tödlich schwer verletzt.
But in this house
Are all the rooms taken?
I am ready to drop,
Wounded almost to death.
Und er läßt es gehen,
Alles, wie es will,
Dreht, und seine Leier
Steht ihm nimmer still.
And he lets it all happen,
Everything as it will,
He plays, and his organ
Is never still.
O unbarmherz’ge Schenke,
Doch weisest du mich ab?
Nun weiter denn, nur weiter,
Mein treuer Wanderstab!
O unmerciful innkeeper,
Are you turning me away?
Onwards then, onwards
O trusty walking staff!
Wunderlicher Alter!
Soll ich mit dir geh’n?
Willst zu meinen Liedern
Deine Leier dreh’n?
Strange old man,
Shall I go with you?
Will you grind your organ
To my songs?
Mut!
Fliegt der Schnee mir ins Gesicht,
Schüttl’ ich ihn herunter.
Wenn mein Herz im Busen spricht,
Sing’ ich hell und munter.
Courage!
The snow flies in my face,
I shake it off.
When my heart speaks in my breast,
I sing brightly and merrily.
Höre nicht, was es mir sagt,
Habe keine Ohren;
Fühle nicht, was es mir klagt,
Klagen ist für Toren.
I do not hear what it tells me,
I have no ears to hear;
I do not feel its complaint,
Complaining is for fools.
Lustig in die Welt hinein
Gegen Wind und Wetter!
Will kein Gott auf Erden sein,
Sind wir selber Götter!
Cheerfully into the world
Against all wind and weather!
If there is no God on earth,
We ourselves are gods!
Reprinted with permission from Onyx Classics
48
49
Winterreise
Der Wegweiser
Was vermeid’ ich denn die Wege,
Wo die ander’n Wand’rer geh’n,
Suche mir versteckte Stege,
Durch verschneite Felsenhöh’n?
inspired gi
ving
LEADERSHIP CIRCLES
The Leadership Circles comprise individual lead
donors whose gifts of $5000 to $25,000 support the
Centre’s eight program pillars.
Artist Development
Colin Golvan QC & Dr Deborah Golvan
Children’s & Family
Betty Amsden AO
Mrs Margaret S Ross AM & Dr Ian C Ross
Great Performers
Anonymous (2)
Brian & Esther Benjamin
Paulette & Warwick Bisley
The John & Jennifer Brukner Foundation
Hans & Petra Henkell
Geoff & Jan Phillips
Lady Primrose Potter AC
Skipp Williamson & Carol Haynes
Life-long Learning
Kathryn Fagg
Local Heroes
Lady Marigold Southey AC
The Klein Family Foundation
Andrew & Theresa Dyer
Jean Hadges
Dr Garry Joslin & Prof Dimity Reed AM
Craig Reeves
Majlis Pty Ltd
Master Class
George & Laila Embelton
Price/Lowy Family in memory of John Price
New Music
Peter Jopling AM QC
Naomi Milgrom AO
MUSIC CIRCLE PATRONS PROGRAM
Magnum Opus Circle ($20,000+)
Yvonne von Hartel AM & Robert Peck AM
Melbourne Recital Centre Board of Directors
Kathryn Fagg
Peter & Cally Bartlett
Stephen Carpenter & Leigh Ellwood
Joseph Corponi
Paul Donnelly & Brigette Treutenaere
Margaret Farren-Price & Prof Ronald Farren-Price AM
Julie Kantor
Eda Ritchie AM
The Playking Foundation
Virtuoso Circle ($10,000+)
J.A Westacott & T.M Shannon
Composers Circle ($4000+)
Anonymous (2)
Andrea Goldsmith
Jenny & Peter Hordern
Alison & David Lansley
Maria Sola
Drs Victor & Karen Wayne
Lyn Williams AM
Melbourne Recital Centre Senior Management
Message Consultants Australia Pty Ltd
Musicians Circle ($2500+)
Eva Besen AO & Marc Besen AC
Robert & Jan Green
Diana Lempriere
James Ostroburski
Christine Sather
Kate & Stephen Shelmerdine Family Foundation
Susan Thacore
Prelude Circle ($1000+)
Anonymous (7)
Charles Baré
Adrienne Basser
Mary Beth Bauer
Helen Brack
Bill & Sandra Burdett
John & Thelma Castles
The Hon Alex Chernov AC QC & Mrs Elizabeth Chernov
Maxine Cooper & Michael Wright
Kathy & George Deutsch
Mary Draper
Lord Francis Ebury & Lady Suzanne Ebury
Maggie Edmond
Susan Fallaw
thank you
The Leo & Mina Fink Fund
William J Forrest AM
Martin Ginnane & Ronnie Binding
Angela Glover
Jan Grant
Nance Grant AM MBE & Ian Harris
Sue Hamilton & Stuart Hamilton AO
Penelope Hughes
Darvell M Hutchinson AM
Prof Andrea Hull AO
Stuart Jennings
Liane Kemp
Ann Lahore
Norene Leslie McCormac
Maria Mercurio
Sarah & Baillieu Myer AC
Stephen Newton AO
Elizabeth O’Keeffe
Helen L Perlen
Dr Robert Piaggio
Peter Rose & Christopher Menz
Rae Rothfield
Samara, Countess of Beekman
Robert & Jenni Stent
Barbara & Duncan Sutherland
Pamela Swansson
Elisabeth & Peter Turner
Sally Webster
Peter Weiss AO
Jacqueline Williams & Peter Murnane
Youth Music Australia
Supporters ($500+)
Peter J Armstrong
David Bardas
David & Rosemary Houseman
Judith Hoy
Gerry & Susan Moriarty
Kaye Salisbury & Bart Wissink
ELISABETH MURDOCH CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT FUND
Named after the Centre’s Founding Patron, this Fund
supports special projects that make a difference to
young artists and accessibility to music.
($20,000+)
Annamila Pty Ltd
($10,000+)
Betty Amsden AO
Naomi Milgrom AO
Mrs Margaret S Ross AM & Dr Ian C Ross
($4000+)
Anonymous (1)
Jennifer Brukner
Julian Burnside AO QC & Kate Durham
Dr Alastair Jackson
Sally MacIndoe
Louise & Martyn Myer Foundation
Allan Myers AO QC & Maria Myers AO
Dr Cherilyn Tillman & Tam Vu
Andrew & Jan Wheeler
Janet Whiting AM & Phil Lukies
($2500+)
Dr Garry Joslin & Prof Dimity Reed AM
James Ostroburski
Yvonne von Hartel AM & Robert Peck AM
Lyn Williams AM
($1000+)
Anonymous (3)
Ashton Raggatt McDougall Architects
Adrienne Basser
John & Mary Barlow
Jane Bloomfield
Barbara Burge
James Calvert-Jones
Sir Roderick Carnegie AC
Des & Irene Clark
Jim Cousins AO & Libby Cousins
George & Laila Embelton
Penny & Grant Fowler
Dr Jane Gilmour OAM
John Howie AM & Linsey Howie
Penelope Hughes
Penny Hutchinson
John Landy AC MBE & Lynne Landy
Christina McCallum & Prof John Langford AM
Dr Richard Mills AM
Rowly & Judy Paterson
Prof David Penington AC & Dr Sonay Penington
Geoff & Jan Phillips
Rob & Philippa Springall
50
Rob & Jenni Stent
Sally Webster
($500+)
Anonymous (1)
Peter & Cally Bartlett
Helen Brack
Brian & Esther Benjamin
The Hon Mary Delahunty
Kathryn Fagg
Margaret Farren-Price & Prof Ronald Farren-Price AM
Colin Golvan QC & Dr Deborah Golvan
Robert & Jan Green
Peter & Barbara Kolliner
Peter & Susan Mahler
Eda Ritchie AM
Christine Rodan & Erskine Rodan OAM
Dr Peter Rogers & Cathy Rogers
Christine Sather
Drs Victor & Karen Wayne
Skipp Williamson & Carol Haynes
Message Consultants Australia
LEGAL FRIENDS OF MELBOURNE RECITAL CENTRE
The group brings together music lovers from the legal
profession in support of the Centre.
Legal Friends Inaugural Patrons
The Hon Justice Michelle Gordon &
The Hon Kenneth M Hayne AC
($4000+)
Rachel & Hon Alan Goldberg AO QC
Naomi Golvan & George Golvan QC
The Hon Justice Michelle Gordon &
The Hon Kenneth M Hayne
Peter B Murdoch QC
Melbourne Recital Centre acknowledges the generous support of its business, philanthropic partners and patrons
Founding Patron
The Late Dame Elisabeth Murdoch ac dbe
Board Members
Kathryn Fagg, Chair
Peter Bartlett
Stephen Carpenter
Joseph Corponi
Paul Donnelly
Julie Kantor
Margaret Farren-Price
Eda Ritchie am
The Kantor Famil
Lyn Williams am
Robert Salzer Foundation
The Calvert-Jones Family
Helen Macpherson Smith Trust
The Hugh Williamson Foundation
Founding Benefactors
Principal Government Partner
Business Partners
International Airline Partner
($2500+)
Elizabeth O’Keeffe
Ralph & Ruth Renard
($1000+)
Marcia & John K Arthur
Ingrid Braun
Justice David Byrne QC
Christine Clough
Bruce Curl
Robert Heathcote & Meredith King
Judge Sara Hinchey & Tom Pikusa
Maryanne B Loughnan QC
David O’Callaghan
Meredith Schilling
Michael Shand QC
($500+)
Dr Gavan Griffith QC AO
The Hon Chris Maxwell AC
Supporting Partners
Program Partners
SHARE THE MUSIC PROGRAM
This program enables disadvantaged children and
adults to attend concerts by providing tickets and
transport free of charge.
($10,000+)
Krystyna Campbell-Pretty
($4000+)
Wendy & David O‘Callaghan & Alan Kozica
($1000+)
Anonymous (1)
Graeme & Paulene Blackman
Caroline & Robert Clemente
Helen Imber
Dorothy Karpin
Christina McCallum & Prof John Langford AM
Dennis & Fairlie Nassau
Kerryn Pratchett
Greg Shalit & Miriam Faine
Sirius Foundation
($500+)
Vivien & Jacob Fajgenbaum
Caroline and Robert Hetzel
Maria Mercurio
Barry & Barbara Shying
Prof Richard Smallwood & Carol Smallwood
Vivien Wertkin
List of patrons at 24 June 2015
Foundations
THE MARIAN &
E.H. FLACK TRUST
THE HUGH WILLIAMSON
FOUNDATION
THE MERLYN
MYER FUND
THE VIZARD
FOUNDATION
THE SENTINEL
FOUNDATION
Encore Bequest Program
Anonymous (2)
Betty Amsden AO
Jenny Anderson
Barbara Blackman
Ken Bullen
Jim Cousins AO & Libby Cousins
51
Dr Garry Joslin
The Estate of Beverley Shelton & Martin Schönthal
Mary Vallentine AO

Auszubildende zum Fachinformatiker m/w (B738)

Der unbekannte Schubert - Konzertchor der Stadt Mannheim

Julia Schubert - Forum Internationale Wissenschaft

Personalpronomen Wer? Who? Possessivpronomen Whose

Motorsport wie damals - Auto

Info - VdH Niefern

Wir suchen zur Verstärkung unserer Buchhaltung zum

- Sportverein Helsa 1945 e.V.

Schubertiade mit Marc Hantai (Flöte), Philippe Pierlot (Barytone)

Hier unsere üblichen Lieder zu Hochzeiten: