Album insights
Reflection often brings order. Publishers also do this, especially when an author or composer has passed away and cannot protest: it is well known that the last of Schubert's "three great song cycles" is a compilation by a publisher. There is no indication that Schubert ever planned for the seven settings of Ludwig Rellstab and the six songs of Heinrich Heine to be performed together, and even less that the nightmarish vision of "Der Doppelgänger" should follow the conventional, albeit exquisite sentimentality of "Die Taubenpost." Nevertheless, Haslinger demonstrated skill as a compiler, and this collection has stood the test of time thanks to Schubert's genius.
"Schwanengesang" is not a cycle in the same sense as "Die schöne Müllerin" and "Winterreise." It does not tell a specific story, but the two groups of songs are connected by their poetic themes—nature, love, and separation in Rellstab's case, bitterness, loss, and despair for Heine—and if one listens to six Heine songs not in the published order but in the order of the poems, they actually create a kind of coherent narrative. In this version obtained by listening to the tracks in the order of 10, 12, 11, 13, 9, 8, a natural sequence unfolds from the encounter in "Das Fischermädchen" to the bitter outcome in "Am Meer"; "Die Stadt," portraying the place where the poet lost his beloved, leads inevitably to the nightmare of "Der Doppelgänger"; in "Ihr Bild," the lover reflects on his loss, revealed as an emotional trap in "Der Atlas," from which he can never escape. Despite avoiding a linear narrative, Schubert's version spans a musical arc between the two powerful pillars of "Der Atlas" and "Der Doppelgänger."
Schubert's early death inevitably cast a posthumous light on "Schwanengesang" and its predecessor "Winterreise," whose correction he read on his deathbed. Haslinger relied on this when he announced "Schwanengesang" as the last fruits of Schubert's creative muse. However, it would be a mistake to assume that Schubert's choice of texts was influenced by thoughts of his imminent demise. His appetite for poetry was insatiable, constantly on the lookout for new poems he could set to music, automatically buying anything new or that came his way. Heine was a new voice in literary circles in 1828, and it was natural that his travel pictures were represented in the weekly reading circles that Schubert attended at the house of Franz von Schober.
It seems Schubert received the Rellstab poems from Beethoven's secretary, Anton Schindler. Ludwig Rellstab, two years younger than Schubert, had sent them to Beethoven, who had made pencil notes next to several poems but died before he could set them to music. Richard Stokes noted the similarity of some Rellstab poems with their nature images and implicit separation from loved ones to those in Beethoven's song cycle "An die ferne Geliebte." What determines the poems shared with "An die ferne Geliebte" is the concept of longing, an indispensable expression in German romantic poetry. The word itself explicitly appears early in "Kriegers Ahnung," in the title of "Frühlingssehnsucht," and in "In der Ferne." But its essence permeates the music of each of these songs.
For instance, "Liebesbotschaft" embodies longing, evident from the gentle rising and falling of the piano introduction and the upward tenor line in the first and last lines of each stanza (both on "Grüße" and "Träume"), symbolizing perhaps the distance between the lovers. While the song outwardly appears conventional with its flowing water and enchanting echoes in the left hand of the piano, it is masterfully constructed with a chain of descending modulations as the singer imagines his beloved deep in thought, culminating in an equally lively ascending sequence describing his imminent return.
"Kriegers Ahnung" reveals Schubert in a proto-Wagnerian mode, keen on the orchestral potential of the piano, with ominous quasi-brass chord progressions conjuring the firelight on the armor. Structured in a manner reminiscent of an operatic scene, the song seamlessly transitions from one stanza to the next, lulling with triplets evolving into a martial undertone, only to return to the initial mood as the singer realizes he will never see his beloved again.
"Frühlingssehnsucht" is permeated by triplets conveying longing and disappointment through passionate piano figurations and obsessively repeated rhythms in the vocal line. Each stanza concludes with a question ("Where to?" "Downward?" etc.), pausing for the music to seemingly ask itself, "Major or minor?" The last stanza begins in a minor key, reverting to major for "Only you!"—though hardly a comforting resolution.
Even the well-known "Serenade" that follows offers little solace. The melody and responsive phrases in the piano accompaniment are wistful. Significant details are highlighted by a shift from minor to major (e.g., in "The traitor's hostile eavesdropping," hinting at a blade's glint), with the word "Quivering" undergoing an enharmonic substitution typical of heightened emotion. Despite the piano and voice reaching a climax with "Come, make me happy!" the shift from major to minor and hope to disappointment is inevitable.
"Desolation," on the other hand, revisits the obsessive rhythms and driving triplets of "Longing in Spring," now weightier, befitting the imposing landscape they evoke (both the poem and Schubert's setting should be mandatory in any exhibition dedicated to the concept of the "Grand"). Though famous, the song holds moments of harmonic originality, the sustained (and unresolved) dominant seventh chord on "Tears" being one example, and even more dramatically, in the final stanza with an enharmonic shift in the build-up to "Stony cliff." In a sense, "The Wanderer" finds himself in a new landscape here, in a rougher state of emotional turmoil.
Both "Desolation" and "Longing in Spring" rely on repetitive rhythmic phrases in the verse, but "In the Distance" takes Rellstab's characteristic to the extreme. On paper, lines like "Woe to the fleeing/Worldly traveler!" hardly suggest a musical setting. However, Schubert possessed a particular talent for translating poetic eccentricities into advantageous musical settings. He recognized that the constant insistence on the present participle and the rhythmic monotony it created kept the poem in a kind of grammatical suspension, and he devised a musical equivalent. Empty octaves harmonized with sighing suspensions subtly evoke a ghostly, barren landscape. Once the voice enters, the musical rhythm, complemented by bell-like chord accents that cannot escape their relentless pacing, deliberately mirrors the linguistic rhythm. It is worth noting that the singer in the original key of F sharp cannot escape the note, which also rings like a bell transformation in "The Love Color" from "Die schöne Müllerin," where the young miller cannot shake off the color green. In the second part of the song, as nature begins to relent and triplets and sixteenth notes illustrate the breeze—and the singer's unfulfilled longing—Schubert remarkably lets the piano play prominently above the vocal line. This effect is especially poignant in major keys (as seen later in "By the Sea"), while the final return of the song to a minor key is devastating.
After this stirring song (which almost bridges the gap between Rellstab and Heine), "Farewell" brings some relief. With its appealing, trotting motif on the piano, it stands as one of Schubert's late, varied strophic forms. Though seemingly carefree, the song hints at a lover trying to shake off disappointment or shield his heart from too much longing, as each stanza concludes with an elongated "Farewell" and an imaginary waving hand, suggesting a lover departing without explanation. While the harmony darkens in the final stanza, hinting at the singer putting on a brave face.
Heinrich Heine built his career by subverting the conventions represented by a poet like Rellstab. Where longing comes into play in Heine's works, it is either undercut by an ironic sting or has deadly consequences, as in "By the Sea," with its undertones of venereal disease. In the latter case, echoes of Schubert's own circumstances are evident, and one can imagine the shock of realization as he came across these poems. With the possible exception of Wilhelm Müller's "Winterreise" poems, Schubert may not have felt such a challenge since the Goethe poems of his youth, and one is tempted to speculate how much more he could have done with Heine had he lived longer.
Though "The Atlas" has earlier models—for example, in its significantly earlier setting of Goethe's "Prometheus"—this song signals a new tautness and stronger intensity in Schubert's song composition. The sparse contours of Heine's verses play a crucial role; packed into a small musical box, Schubert's music gains strength from the constraints it constantly seeks to break free from. This is immediately evident in the groaning suspensions in the opening bars, forming the interval of a diminished fourth, as if defining the tight boundaries of Atlas' prison. When the voice comes in, the octaves in the left hand of the piano dogged