Schubert, Mahler and the Weight of the Past: 'Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen' and 'Winterreise' Author(s): Susan

Youens Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Jul., 1986), pp. 256-268 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/735888 . Accessed: 21/06/2013 03:04
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SCHUBERT, MAHLER AND THE WEIGHT OF THE PAST: 'LIEDER EINES FAHRENDEN GESELLEN' AND 'WINTERREISE'
BY SUSAN YOUENS
of historical consciousness and the rediscoveryof musical treasures of THE ADVENT the past brought composers in the nineteenthcenturyface to face with a typically poets, early-Romantic dilemma that had previously beset eighteenth-century haunted by the ghosts of Milton and Shakespeare (Goethe's frankrejoicing that he not forcedto compete with Shakespeare's was not an English writerand therefore achievement comes to mind). Compositions were no longer produced largely for their own milieu and age, consumed on the spot and then superseded, in the natural evolutionary order, by new works; instead, they lived on as models for subsequent generations-to be both loved and dreaded, for at the same time younger artists were enjoined to be original. The resulting, uniquely modern, conflictwas one that each composer had to resolve in his own way. In Samuel to be placed in a state of Johnson's words, 'It is, indeed, always dangerous is still greaterwhen that and the danger with excellence, unavoidable comparison the same observation Malraux paraphrased death'.' is consecrated by excellence much later with regard to creative artistsin theiryouth: 'Every young man's heart is a graveyard in which are inscribed the names of a thousand dead artists but whose actual denizens are a few mighty,oftenantagonistic, ghosts'.2 Later works became, at theircore, responses to earlier worksin the assertion,whetherconscious or unconscious, of priority:'Where my predecessor's creation was, there let mine be'. The longing is impossible because the precursorirrevocablyexists, nor would the late-comer wish him out of existence, but the desire to deny formative influencesfromothers and to assert one's own uniqueness in an age that placed so high a premium on originality is part of the innermost fabric of music after Beethoven. The sense of creative impotence in the face ofpriorgreatnessis perhaps most marked when the dominating influence is immediate-Chausson's remark about the Wagnerian splendour that leaves behind it a darkness in which his successors grope vainly to light theirown candles is an example;3 but the powers exercised by an earlier master on later artists can and do extend across several generations. For any German song composer in the later nineteenthcentury,particularlyin Vienna, the great precursor was inevitably Schubert. The achievement was so prodigious, not only in number but in range and breadth, fromthe smallest-scale, finelycarved miniatures that representa neplus ultrain intimacy to the dramatic ballad-cantatas and the splendour of the Muller cycles, that later composers might
I
2 3

Quoted in W. Jackson Bate, The Burden of the Past and the English Poet, New York, 1972, p. 3. Oxford,1973,p. 13. of Poetry, a Theory of Influence: in Harold Bloom, The Anxiety reference Quoted without Robin Holloway, Debussy and Wagner,London, 1979, p. 13.

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well have wondered what remained forthem to do. (T. S. Eliot's remarkthat every great poet [composer, artist] and even minor ones 'use up' forever some possibility leave theirsuccessors with lessened resources is one of the language and therefore version of the same anxiety.) Schubert himself,as one of the progenitorsof a newly Romanticized Lied, seems largely to have escaped the anxietyofinfluence,at least, in the sphere of song composition (though his creative relationship to his older contemporaryBeethoven is a fascinatingsubject, especially, in this context,when one recalls that An dieferneGeliebte was an experimentin a genre never thereafter resumed). When he speaks of Mozart in his diary,4the passage breathes unalloyed rapture, the joy of turning to Mozartian beauty for its support to the heart and spirit,with no trace of the Emersonian invective against one's creative ancestors: 'They engross our attention, and so prevent a due inspection of ourselves; they prejudice our judgement in favour of their abilities, and so lessen the sense of our own; and they intimidate us with the splendour of their renown'.5But forBrahms, Mahler, Wolf and theircontemporariesSchubert was just such a Great Ancestor,a glorious figureto be venerated but also an inhibitingand demoralizing presence fromthe past whose accomplishments could not be equalled or challenged without trepidation and self-depreciation(the modest Schubert would undoubtedly have been amazed to know that he was to become a spectre of such power). The mature Brahms who wrote the following passage to a certain Geheimrat Wendt in 1887 knew what it meant to write songs in the wake of a titanic predecessor, knew both the spiritual enrichmentand the burden placed on composers in the presentby this 'enchantment' from the past: The true successorto Beethovenis not Mendelssohn. . . nor is it Schumann,but Schubert. It is unbelievable, thequalityofmusiccontained in thesesongs.No composer understands as he does how to set wordsproperly. With him perfection is always so naturally the outcomethatit seems as ifnothing could be otherwise . .. The way he treateda ghasel by Platen is enchanting. I have triedit too, but in comparisonto Schuberteverything is botching.6 The Schubertian homages and echoes that abound in Brahms are by no means the only symptoms,or even the most complex, of the modern dilemma ofinfluence. Another way of combating the prior claims of a great man or a great work is to rewriteit, to appropriate it to oneselfand alter it in some way to make it uniquely one's own and force it into conformity with one's own vision. It is precisely this phenomenon which is manifestedin Gustav Mahler's firstsong-cycle,Liedereines fahrenden Gesellen, at its heart a response to Schubert's Winterreise. Mahler never acknowledged the relationship and may well have hidden it even from his own
Otto Erich Deutsch, Schubert: a Documentaiy trans.Eric Blom, London, 1946, p. 60: 'A light, Biography, bright, fineday thiswill remainthroughout mywholelife.As from afarthe magicnotesof Mozart's musicstill gently haunt me. How unbelievably and yetagain how gently, vigorously, was it impressed deep, deep intothe heart by Schlesinger's masterly playing.Thus does our soul retainthesefairimpressions, whichno time,no circumstances, can efface, and they lighten out existence. They showus in thedarkness ofthislifea bright, clear, lovelydistance,forwhichwe hope withconfidence. 0 Mozart,immortal Mozart,how many,oh how endlessly manysuch comforting perceptions ofa brighter and better lifehast thoubrought to our souls!' (13 June 1816). 5 Quoted from'Self-Reliance' in Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence, p. 27. 6 Max Kalbeck, Brahms, i (Vienna & Leipzig, 1904), p. 229. Brahmsis referring Johannes to Schubert's'Die Liebe hat gelogen',D.751, set to a ghasel by Augustvon Platen-Hallermunde; no setting by Brahmsis known. Brahmsquotes Schubert's 'Der Doppelgiinger' in his 'Herbstgefiihl', Op. 48 No. 7, and thelast songof Winterreise, 'Der Leiermann',is the basis of his Riickert setting 'Einf6rmig ist der Liebe Gram', Op. 113 No. 13, one of the canons for women's voices.

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consciousness, but lack of awareness on the artist's part is no denial of the fact of influence-it may in fact be indicative of its deep significance. enoughin otherways.But whenhis anxiety may be self-revealing or artist The writer or fearof and his achievement matterof his craft, has to do with the all-important or to expressit only withit privately to wrestle prefers he naturally there, impotence indirectly.7 The evidence of a strugglewith traditionforone's own name, likeJacob wrestling with the Angel, is in the work itself,both text and music, since Mahler wrote the poetryforthreeof the foursongs himself.He summarized his new composition in a letterto a close friend,Dr. Friedrich Lohr, on New Year's Day 1885: 'The idea of the songs as a whole is that a wayfaringman, who has been strickenby fate, now sets forthinto the world, travellingwherever his road may lead him'.8 The same briefdescription could apply as well to Wilhelm Muller's and Schubert's longer, more complex work, and thematic resemblances between the Liedereinesfahrenden are easy to find: the solitaryfarewell,and the leave-taking and Winterreise Gesellen by night,the sweetheartwho has married another man, the longing fordeath and the linden tree are all readily apparent. All are also common currency in Germany, and the ubiquity of these images and themes might nineteenth-century seem an argument against the claim for a specific relationship between the two German verse and cycles-there are groves of linden trees in nineteenth-century Wanderlieder by the hundred (Muller, who was an advanced case of Wanderlust himself, wrote dozens of them). But Mahler does more than merely borrow a vignette or two from the storehouse of German Romanticism: he also inverts elements that could only come fromMuller and Schubert: it is the winterjourney from 50 years earlier that we see through a glass darkly in the 'yellow field' and 'dark little room' of the later work. It has been known forsome time that the textsof Mahler's Liedereinesfahrenden more are a latter-day descendant of poems fromDes Knaben Wunderhorn;9 Gesellen song, 'Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht', is adapted froma specifically,the first poem in the third volume of the Arnim-Brentano collection. In Des Knaben the two quatrains of 'Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht' formthe first Wunderhorn in tone, subject, metre, portion of a quodlibet consistingof several parts, different provenance, even language (the second section, which Mahler did not use at all, is in Swabian dialect). Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht, Tag: Hab ich einen traurigen Geh ich in mein Kammerlein, Wein um meinen Schatz.

trans.EithneWilkinsetal., London & Boston, 1979 ed. Knud Martner, Mahler, of Gustav Letters Selected themost theone containing himthelastpoemofthecycle, Mahler tellsLohrthathe is sending p. 81. In thisletter Schubertianechoes, but he did not do so. I The date ofMahler's first butit was certainly is a vexedquestion, Wunderhorn acquaintancewithDes Knaben Mahler:theWunderhorn London, 1975,pp. Years, stated:see Donald Mitchell,Gustav earlierthan Mahler himself 117-19.
8

I Bate, The Burden of thePast, p. 8.

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Blumlein blau, verdorrenicht, Du stehstauf griinerHaide; Des Abends, wenn ich schlafengeh, So denk ich an das Lieben.0 Mahler preserves virtuallyall eight lines of the folkpoem intact but makes a few significant and characteristic changes of wording. 'Einen traurigen Tag' is personalized and becomes 'meinen traurigen Tag', and the last line is similarly altered. The lover in the folkpoem thinksof love at the end, Mahler's introverted and melancholy alteregonot ofLiebebut of Leide,of his sorrow,which he claims as a possession. In the last line ofthe quodlibet segmentthe rejected lover says, 'So denk ich an das Lieben', the word 'So' encompassing the previous lines of the quatrain-he implores the blue flowernot to fade so thathe may thinkof love or of his beloved when he goes to bed in the evening. The flowerhas become the symbol of his love; there is perhaps also the subsequent association forlater readers with Novalis's 'blaue Blume', one of the primary symbols of German Romanticism. Mahler changes the scenario: he too tells the blue flowernot to witherand fade, but he then changes his mind when he hears the 'sweet littlebird'. The 'Voglein siuss'is entirelyMahler's contribution,sound added to the colours of the landscape and a link furthermore between the firstsong and the second, with its talkative finch (a 'Fink' who sings 'Zink! Zink!' is a charming,childlike touch and a variation on the 'Kukuk! Kukuk!' refrainsin Des KnabenWunderhorn). The wayfarercannot bear the dissonance between nature's beauty and his own sorrow; unlike the folk protagonist, he would have the landscape change and darken at his behest, in accordance with his misery. There is no conflict in the quodlibet between the beautiful landcape and thejilted lover, who cherishes the sight and memoryof the blue flower,but Mahler's wayfarer,an inheritorof the pathetic fallacy, feels his pain heightened by the stark contrast with a brilliant,sunlit, summertime ('Lenz ist ja vorbei!') scene. Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht Fr6hlicheHochzeit macht, Hab' ich meinen traurigen Tag! Geh' ich in mein Kaimmerlein, Dunkles Kaimmerlein! Weine, wein' um meinen Schatz, Um meinen lieben Schatz! Bliimleinblau! Bliimleinblau! Verdorrenicht!verdorrenicht! Voglein siiss! Voglein siuss! Du singstauf griinerHeide Ach! wie ist die Welt so schon! Zikuth! Zikuth! Singet nicht! Bliuhetnicht! Lenz ist ja vorbei! Alles singen ist nun aus! Denk' ich an mein Leide! An mein Leide!
10

Des Abends, wenn ich schlafen geh'

has 'Wann .

Achimvon Arnim& ClemensBrentano, Des Knaben iii (Berlin,1968), 124. The originaltext Wunderhorn, . .'2

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of creatingfolkpoetrythat could Mahler had no thoughtof writingim Volkston, possibly be mistaken for the real thing; he assimilated folk idioms in a manner from Muller's (who was praised by the young Heine for his true quite different of his own works.If he was not understanding of folkverse"), as the starting-point as good a poet as Muller, the 'German Byron"2 (no master himself,although his 'Winterreise' is oftenunderrated'3),he was an ardent and oftenbeautifullylyrical with its source in Gesellen poem of the Liedereinesfahrenden one. Comparing the first reveals clearly Mahler's technique of rhapsodic expansion, Des Knaben Wunderhorn his idiosyncratic mixture of folk idiom and contemporaneous traits and his extension of the simpler, more concentrated substance of the folk poem. The Wayfarer poems are undeniably of their time-in fact theyanticipate some of the art-with theirdeliberatelyirregularline lengths sinuosities and curves ofjugendstil the heightenedemotional tone, the abrupt changes of and varying poetic rhythms, mood. The contemporaneityof the Mahlerian style helps to explain why both the remained hidden from and the link with Winterreise Wunderhorn source in Des Knaben view for a time. The antithesisbetweenjoy and sorrow,the 'happy' wedding and the wayfarer's 'sorrowful'day, is augmented by means of a technique that appears several times in the course of the poem-the repetitionof all or part of a phrase for emphasis, with an additional adjective: Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht, FrohlicheHochzeit macht, Geh' ich in mein Kiimmerlein, Dunkles Kaimmerlein! Weine, wein' um meinen Schatz, Um meinen lieben Schatz! When Mahler repeats and elaborates these fragmentaryphrases, the second, paired line is both shorter and metrically altered: Wenn Mein SchaitzHochzeit macht, FrohlicheHochzeit micht Metre, caesura and accent shiftand change throughoutthe poem, although the division of the line into two halves, each half in trocheeswith a masculine ending, as in the firstline, is the most frequentconstruction,one created either by simple repetition ('Bliimlein blau! Bliimlein blau!', 'V6glein siuss! V6glein siiss!'), by parallel imperatives ('Singet nicht! Bliuhetnicht!') or by a caesura within a line, such that the weight of the phrase is concentrated at the centre ('Wenn mein Schatz I Hochzeit macht'). To a certain extent Mahler derives his shiftingpoetic where the varied accents and metres fromthe quodlibet in Des KnabenWunderhorn, rhythmsand line lengths (although they are varied much less than in Mahler)
and 1 Heinrich i (Mainz, 1950),169-70.See Susan Youens, 'PoeticRhythm Hirth, ed. Friedrich Heine:Briefe, lxv (1984), 28. ', Music & Letters, Musical Metre in Schubert's"Winterreise" the from 12 Muller was among the best-known forindependence Germanchampionsof the Greekstruggle were the 47 Griechenlieder. Turks. The poems that won him immediaterecognition 13 See Susan Youens, 'Retracinga Winter Music,ix (1985-6), 128-35. Journey',19thCentury

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create an effect of naivety,a lack of artfulness, and a particular kind of expressivity which Mahler then exaggerates-changing inflections of sorrow. In the first quatrain of the Wunderhorn poem threelines contain fourpoetic feeteach, the fourth line three, while the second stanza employs four-foot lines throughout.The first verse is exclusively trochaic; the second, afterone trochaic line, is iambic. The first stanza ends with the shortestline of the verse; the iambic close of the second is two syllables longer. The second and third lines of the firstverse are parallel to one another rhythmicallyand syntacticallyin a fashion not duplicated in the second stanza: 'Hab ich einen traurigenTag: / Geh ich in mein Kaimmerlein'. Even here the 'extra' syllable in the word 'trau-ri-gen' has no equivalent in the paired line that follows,in which the trochees are quite regular. There is no end-rhyme,only assonance of a sort and near-rhymein the firstverse-'macht', 'Tag', 'Schatz'and a predominance of 'ei' sounds in the last two lines ('Geh ich in mein Kaimmerlein,/ Wein um meinen Schatz'), and the second stanza lacks even those elements. All four texts set to music'4 in the Wayfarer cycle are stylisticallylike the transformedfolk verse of the beginning, an emphatic, rhapsodic style much like Nietzsche's poetry in Also sprachZarathustra, exactly contemporaneous with the Liedereinesfahrenden In the first Gesellen. threesongs the lines are all short-breathed; only in the last, the Trauermarsch, does Mahler write longer, more deliberately paced lines, forobvious reasons. Even therethe ending, like many passages in Nos. 1-3, consists largely of fragmentary phrases, at times single words ('Alles! Alles!'). Because of Mahler's propensityforexclamation marks (24 of them in the second poem alone), the texts share a marked breathlessness, although the rapidity with which the brief phrases flash by on the printed page is mitigated or cancelled altogether by their prolongation in music. In the vocal line Mahler will occasionally fragmenta phrase of poetryeven further foremotional effect, as in the line 'und hore ... klingen ... ihr silbern Lachen' fromthe thirdsong. Where there is rhyme at all in the second, third and fourth songs it is either very simple ('Lust-Brust', 'Gast-Rast', 'seh'-weh-geh' ') or dependent upon assonance and alliteration, naive rhymes, as in 'hing-Fink' in the second song. The style, the themes and images are all an amalgamation of traditional and Romantic motifsin their most recent apparition; the fusion of the two streams distinguishes the four poems set to music from the one other extant poem explicitly on the Wayfarer theme. 'Die Nacht blickt mild aus stummen, ew'gen Fernen', dated Kassel December 1884 and firstpublished in Der Merker of I March 1912, is writtenin iambic pentameters-a metre never found in the Wunderhorn poems-with end-rhyme, not only in rimeembrasse'e but rimesriches: Siehst du den stummen, fahrenden Gesellen? Gar einsam und verlorenist sein Pfad, Wohl Weg und Weiser der verlorenhat Und ach, kein Stern will seinen Pfad erhellen

15

" Manuscriptversionsof the Wayfarer poems existthatdiffer significantly from the textsas set to music. Mitchell (The Wunderhorn Years,pp. 247-8) suggeststhat these were most likelyintendedas separate and self-sufficient literary works. '5 Mitchell, op. cit.,pp. 124,247-8. Mahler's letter to Lohr refers to six songs;thesixthpoem was probably 'Die Sonne spinntihr farbigNetz', also dated Kassel, December 1884 (Henry-Louisde La Grange,Mahler, i (London, 1974), 826-7, 831).

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ofthesong does notspeakuntiltheend ofthepoem,unlikethetexts This wayfarer scattered The exclamations speaks throughout. lover cycle,in whichthe rejected of thefour style jagged vivid, the Gesellen, einesfahrenden Lieder in the hereand there more more literary, are and style tone the here; occur not familiartexts,do folk to owes nothing destiny the wanderer's and even, Byronic, 'elevated', more cannotansweritsriddleand mustatonewithhis theSphinx, he encounters poetry; and meadows of rural Germanyare gone, and thereis no life. The bird-song only'des Weges Leid'. This is another at all oflove or a falsesweetheart, mention on anotherjourney,one that ends very differently. wayfarer Gesell' ' of Mahler's titleforthe cycle recalls the travelling The 'fahrender who is nota in Winterreise, but it is thewanderer Muillerin, in Die schone journeyman in Mahler's cycle.The two whose presencewe sense morestrongly journeyman, landscapes, different takeplace in utterly last and Mahler'sfirst, Schubert's cycles, journey' near the end of the journey' becomesa 'summer however;the 'winter song'Ich ging' and theWunderhorn setin theworldoftheThirdSymphony century, songs the Wald'. In each of the fourWayfarer mit Lust durch einen griunen in all but and beautiful sunlit bereavedlovergoes out intothemeadowsand fields, 'schoneWelt' in thesecond, thefinch's thelast song-the 'grine Heide' ofthefirst, There are the 'gelbes Feld' of the third,but the 'dunkle Heide' of the fourth. speaks to the bird, song: Mahler's wayfarer in the first parallels with Winterreise song, 'Die Kraihe',to the crow that had Schubert'swanderer,in his fifteenth accompanied him thus far.The wanderertoo laments,in No. 12, 'Einsamkeit', when the skies are blue and sunnyand the breezessoft-'Ach! dass die Luftso are notin ruhig!/ Ach, dass die Welt so licht!'-because he and his surroundings Lied, is thelocus formostofthe song,thenight-time accord. But Mahler's fourth thewanderer's musicaland textual: and inverted, bothdirect references, Winterreise 24 songs;the ofSchubert's withthefirst muchlonger journeybeginsimmediately theone song,thelast within contained road to deathis entirely shorter wayfarer's of Mahler's cycle. Mahler's wayfarer,like Muller's wanderer, leaves the withno one to bid himfarewell; Platz' and setsout alone and at night, 'allerliebster and mourn and bothresent bothtakepains to stealaway undercoverofdarkness, unattended, and are unseen and subsequent journeys departures thefactthattheir and solitary.The frozenriverin 'Auf dem friendless that they are completely Flusse' cannot even vouchsafe the wanderer any words of parting,and in whilethewayfarer and without greeting', 'Einsamkeit'he goes on hisway 'solitary conditionby their Both lonely him farewell. emphasize bade sings that no one in 'Gute shadow a moon-cast 'companions', non-human and mute to reference sorrow and love and mit') als mein Gefahrte Mondenschatten zieht ein Nacht' ('Es und Lieb' Leide!'). war Gesell' ('Mein Mahler's wayfarer for in Winterreise. song may have its origins Even the openingimage in thefourth by meansofrepeated linksthesongsin thecycleone to another Mahler carefully in the song and the finch images and phrases-the 'sweet littlebird' in the first visionof theworldis. The eeriemetonymic secondsongbothsingofhowbeautiful two blue eyes first appears in the thirdsong: 'Wenn ich in den the sweetheart's suns ofthemultiple Himmelseh', / seh' ich zwei blaue Augensteh'n!',reminiscent journey.Throughout the penultimate song in the winter in 'Die Nebensonnen', relatesaspectsofthelandscapearoundhimto hisown cyclethewanderer Miuller's for and reflections; example,thecrowsthatperchon thepointed feelings thoughts, 262

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eaves of houses and whose motions as they shiftto and fro displace the ice and snow that have accumulated there seem in 'Riuckblick' to mock him, to throw snowballs at him. In 'Die Nebensonnen' he sees, not a hallucination, as so many have assumed, but the optical-atmospheric phenomenon called parhelia, in which refractionproduces a neighbour image of the sun on eitherside. The two reflected suns that eventually disappear when the atmospheric conditions change are 'die besten zwei', symbolic of his formersweetheart's eyes, now also vanished fromhis sight, though they once seemed so steadfast ('Und sie auch standen da so stier,/ als wollten sie nicht weg von mir'). Mahler's wayfarertoo looks up in the heavens and sees there the image of his beloved's eyes. The ending of the cycle, the last section of 'Die zwei blauen Augen', is the most revealing, the place where one is most conscious of the roots in Winterreise. The wayfarerfindsa linden tree by the side of the road and goes to sleep-sleep a trope fordeath; here forthe first time he 'rests in sleep'. Earlier, the burning knifein his breast gave him no peace, no rest,by day or night ('Nicht bei Tag, nichtbei Nacht, wenn ich schlieff', in the thirdsong), like the wanderer's 'burning wounds' and the 'Wurm' that gnaws at his heart in 'Rast', but at the end he findsthe peace that has eluded him. Beneath the linden tree in bloom, with its blossoms 'snowing' down upon him, everythingpainful in life-love, sorrow, the world itself, dreamsbecomes 'good' once again, transformed: Auf der Strasse steht ein Lindenbaum, Da hab' ich zum erstenMal im Schlaf geruht! Unter dem Lindenbaum! Der hat seine Bliuteniiber mich geschneit, Da wusst' ich nicht,wie das Leben tut War alles, alles wieder gut! Ach, alles wieder gut! Alles! Alles! Lieb' und Leid, Und Welt und Traum! It is the identification of the linden tree with death that points to the origins in the earlier work,specificallySchubert's fifth song, 'Der Lindenbaum'. Since the time of the Minnesingers the Lindenbaum, as the spot forlovers' rendezvous and hence, by extension, a symbol of all that is gentle, sweet (lind) and good in nature, is a commonplace in German lyric poetry. Walther von der Vogelweide's beautiful 'Under der linden an der heide', in which a young woman sings of the sheltered spot beneath the linden tree where she and her lover lay together,is the prototype for many poems that followed, and it is a poem that nineteenth-century folksong enthusiasts such as Muller probably knew; it was (mistakenly) included in several anthologies of German folkpoetry in the early years of the century,among them the Sammlung deutscher Volkslieder of 1807 by Gustav Biisching and Friedrichvon der Hagen, a collection that Muller mentions in his diary.'6 Elsewhere, in the poem 'Das Weltende' from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, a young man begins by saying, in truesttraditional fashion: 'Because I do not have a sweetheart,I will findone right away ... I walk up and down the narrow streetsuntil I reach the great linden tree ... there sat my sweetheart'. Mahler himselfwas later to set Friedrich Riickert's
p. 28.
16

See Diay andLetters of Wilhelm Miller,ed. PhilipSchuyler Allen & James Taft Hatfield, Chicago, 1903,

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'Ich atmet' einen linden Duft', a poem in which the gentle scent of a single twig is no from a linden tree evokes an entire love. But the linden tree in Winterreise longer a lovers' meeting-place; instead, the wanderer makes a crucial decision in 'Der Lindenbaum', the turningpoint of the cycle, and Mahler subsequently makes of that moment the basis for the ending of his own work. hears in memory the sound of the linden leaves The wanderer in Winterreise rustlingin a tree that he has just that very night passed by. The remembrance is impelled by what happens in the previous song, 'Erstarrung',in which he searches franticallyfor a trace of green grass or flowers,something alive and blooming, along the river-bankwhere he used to strollarm-in-armwith his sweetheart. In the ice and snow ofwinterthe search is futile,and he soon gives it up, realizing that he will inevitably forgether when the pain she has caused him ends. (This is an admission that Mahler's wayfarer,whom we perceive somehow as less mature, more sentimental, than Muller's wanderer, never makes.) However, the panicstricken,short-livedattempt to find a bit of greeneryproduced in turn a 'green' reminiscence of the linden tree in happier days, when he 'dreamed sweet dreams' in its shade and carved words of love in its bark. The remembered rustling of the linden leaves sounds to the wanderer like voices, which seem to say to him, 'Come here to me, companion! Here you will find your rest'. Their message could mean either of two things: that the wanderer actually returnto the past, an impossible delusion, or that he die, a dissolution into nature itselfand a returnpossible only in death. Thomas Mann interpretedthe song as emblematic of death near the end of The Magic Mountain,when Hans Each Castorp becomes obsessed with music, his last 'tutor' in this Bildungsroman. nighthe listens over and over again to fiveworks in particular, always ending with 'Der Lindenbaum', which symbolizes for him the German spirit, the Teutonic past, the countryitself.His love forSchubert's song, however,is an uneasy one, full of darker resonance: 'What was the world behind the song, which the motions of his conscience made to seem a world of forbiddenlove?', asks the author-narrator and concludes: 'It was death'.'7 At the end, as Hans runs into battle in World War I, he sings, without realizing it, two phrases from 'Der Lindenbaum', first'Ich schnitt' in seine Rinde so manches liebe Wort' and finally 'Und seine Zweige rauschten, als riefen sie mir zu . . .', breaking off at that point. Mann's recognition of the realm of death in Schubert's and Muller's song is and sixthverses of 'Thranenregen' from supported by a similar passage in the fifth Die schoneMuillerin: Und in den Bach versunken Der ganze Himmel schien Und wollte mich mit hinunter In seine Tiefe zieh'n. Und fiberden Wolken und Sternen Da rieseltemunterder Bach, Und riefmit Singen und Klingen: Geselle, Geselle! mir nach.

New York, 1969, p. 625. trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter, Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain,

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The brook, the miller-lad's confidantthroughoutthe cycle, calls him 'Geselle', a motifrepeated later with the linden leaves and the wanderer, and seems as if it wishes to draw him within its depths in a veiled invitationto death that the youth either does not acknowledge or does not recognize. At the end, perhaps miller-ladindeed rememberingthe brook's earlier words, the despairing and bereft drowns himself(the brook's lullaby, 'Gute Ruh', gute Ruh', thu' die Augen zu', has its latter-dayechoes in the Mahlerian lullaby-farewellsat the end of the Liedereines derErde,where long and unhappy fahrenden Gesellen, and Das Lied von Kindertotenlieder journeys culminate in the peace and longed-for rest of death). Unlike the miller-lad, the wanderer refuses to heed the linden leaves. His hat blows offhis head in the cold wind, but he does not turn back to retrieveit, and his austere, almost curt words, 'Ich wendete mich nicht', are a double refusal: to turn back and find his hat, to heed the linden voices and join them in death. The temptation to stand still in the midst of a winterstorm and freezeto death lingers long after he is distant from the place where he heard the 'voices', whose true provenance is withinhis own mind, but it is a temptationhe resists. (Hans Castorp fatally misinterprets 'Der Lindenbaum', recognizing rightly the attraction of death-and a uniquely Teutonic death at that-but paying no heed to the wanderer's heroic rejection of the invitation.) Afterthis crucial turning-point the journey continues, but Mahler's wayfarerends his 'Reise' there in a reversal and revision of 'Der Lindenbaum' and ultimately the entire Muller cycle. There are musical links as well. It hardly seems coincidental that the Liedereines Gesellen fahrenden begin in D minor, followed by D major at the start of the second song, and D minor again as the initial tonality of the third-the keys of 'Gute Nacht'. In the earliest extant manuscriptof the Wayfarersongs the thirdsong, 'Ich hab' ein gliuhend'Messer' begins in B minor, a familiarSchubertian key forsongs of desolation, grief,melancholy, all shades of sorrow, and ends in C minor, one of the principal tonalities in Winterreise ('Erstarrung', 'Rast', 'Der greise Kopf, 'Die Krahe'); revised, the song begins in D minor and ends in E flatminor,whose tonic major is also importantin the earlier work. The fourth and last song, perhaps most significantly,begins in E minor, the tonic minor key of the E major of 'Der Lindenbaum'; the thirdstanza of Schubert's song is set in E minor. The linden tree episode at the end, though,is set by Mahler largelyin F major with touches of tonic minor, like the lullaby conclusion of Kindertotenlieder; curiously, F major is the principal tonalityin Winterreise only once, in 'Das Wirtshaus', when the wanderer is actually at a cemetery,the longed-for 'Ruhestatte' of Mahler's wayfarer, when he is most hopeful of peace, refugeand solace in death. There are also a few thematic reminiscences. The opening of 'Die zwei blauen Augen' (Ex. I a) bears an undeniable similarity to that of Schubert's 'Der Wegweiser' (Ex. 1b). The two songs are also notably alike in tempo and atmosphere."8 Mahler's marchefune'bre has the dotted rhythmscharacteristic of the genre, unlike Schubert's song, but the resemblance is still startlinglyclose. To our present knowledge, Mahler never mentioned or wrote of any resemblances between the Lieder einesfahrenden Gesellenand Winterreise, but the
18 See Susan Youens, 'Wegweiser in Winterreise', Journal of Musicology The anacrusic motif (forthcoming). risingby step through theinterval ofa third, followed by non-legato repeatednotes,also occursin 'Gute Nacht' and elsewhere in Winterreise.

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Ex. 1

(a)

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Die zwei

en Au - gen

von mei - nem

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. W

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-

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F

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F Y

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mussten ich

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j t . J _II6 I -

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Was ver meid ich

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I I .I266 ge, wo die an dern Wan drer gehn,

denn die

We

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Q--r ,,-,-152r r

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echoes and inversionsof Miiller-Schubert in the later cycle could neverthelessonly be the product of Schubert's influence,all the strongeras the latter-daycomposer began work on his firstessay in a genre the earlier composer had so forcefully defined near the end of his life. Mahler was not, of course, the only fin-de-siecle composer for whom the overwhelming influence of a previous master had to be overcome, ifnever entirelyand oftenmany times: Debussy's long strugglewith the Wagnerian legacy, 'the ghost of old Klingsor', is a case in point. The anguish of coming immediately after a great creative achievement echoes throughout the words and music alike of belle6poque France, summed up most poignantlyperhaps in Chabrier's cry 'Wagner m'a tue','9and in everybar of Gwendoline, Le Roi Arthus of Chausson, d'Indy's Fervaal,Dukas's ArianeetBarbe-Bleue and Debussy's own Pelle6as et MAlisande, a work whose very resistance to Wagner's influencedefinesWagner's power even more cogentlythan the leitmotifs and faintreminiscencesof Parsifal.20 Song composers after Schubert and Schumann had to contend with the dual burden of both a musical and a literarypast, particularlywhen they set the same poetryto music as theirpredecessors. The young Brahms's settingof Eichendorffs 'Mondnacht' ('Es war, als hatt' der Himmel') is, forall its intrinsicqualities and distinctivelyBrahmsian touches, one instance of the inhibiting effectof a prior model; it was writtenwithinfifteen years of Schumann's masterpiece in the Op. 39 Liederkreis and published in 1854, while Schumann was still alive. In the same year Brahms's Op. 3 contained a setting of 'In der Fremde', with which Schumann opened his Op. 39, and the result was a somewhat pallid derivative. Yet the Op. 3 set begins with Brahms's first extant masterpiece in the fieldof song, 'Liebestreu', to a text by Robert Reinick. Brahms (in 1885?) told a friendthat he had in his youth set all of Eichendorff and Heine (a tall order) to music but had desisted from publishing his settings because he knew of 'better compositions'; the distinction between 'other compositions' and 'mine' makes it clear that the 'other works' were not his own. . . . I set thewholeofEichendorff and Heine to music.Thereweresomereallynicelittle songs among them... And you will grantme, I hope, that I once wrotea setting of [Heine's] 'Du bist wie eine Blume'? But you probablywon't remember that I set [Geibel] (and even Eichendorff and others)extensively as a boy. Whenthetimeforpublication came I was happilyshrewd enough to recognizeother compositions as betterand to let mine lie.21 None of the early Heine songs survives,and Brahms did not returnto that poet until the firstsong of the Ffinf Gesange, Op. 71, 'Es liebt sich so lieblich im Lenze'. By then he knew, as he had not known in his youth, to avoid those textsby Heine, Goethe, Riickert and others that had previously been set by Beethoven, Schubert or Schumann, in tacit acknowledgementof the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of banishing their sounds from his mind when faced with texts they had unforgettably rendered in music. Wolf could do so, but only as a conscious effort:
" See Francois Lesure, prefaceto Martine Kahan & Nicole Wild, Wagner et la France, Paris, 1984, p. 7. See Holloway,Debussyand Wagner, passim. Hollowayquotes Chabrier'sremark on hearingTristanforthe first at theage of38: 'Thereis enoughmusicfor time, a century in thiswork;theman has left us nothing to do' (op.
20

cit., 2?.

Kalbeck, Brahms, i. 138-9.

12).

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he set only those texts that he felthad not received theirfullestpotential musical expression from Schubert-texts which, indeed, could not be fullyrealized until the development of a 'post-Wagnerian' harmonic vocabulary22-and at considerable cost in peace of mind, knowing as he did the inevitable comparisons that would result. 'They fairlythreatenme with Schubert, but I cannot keep my mouth shut because a man of genius lived before me and wrote splendid songs 23 a statement that is the epitome of the anxiety of influence;the words 'splendid' and defensiveposture. 'genius', the obvious veneration, are as notable as the bristling, (It is remarkable that the considerable influenceof Carl Loewe on Wolf seems not to have been a source of nearly so much perturbationas that of Schubert.) The Schubertian 'threat' was omnipresentin Wolf: he worked in the same genre, on the same scale, set the same poets and even the same poems. For Brahms to begin his firstpublished piano sonata with a quotation fromthe 'Hammerklavier', forWolf to place the ten Goethe texts previously set by Schubert at the head of his was to admit and even emblazon what could not be hidden anyway, Goethe-Lieder, in the form of a but Mahler is another matter. There is no Brahmsian hommage direct quotation, nor is therethe wish to supplant Schubert's 'unsuccessful' setting of a poem with his own. Instead, the influenceis more internalized: the composer who would take unto himselfand then alter a masterpiece by Schubert might not be willing to proclaim the fact to himself, much less the outside world.

Emil 22 Speaking of his own settingsof Goethe's 'Prometheus'and 'Ganymed' in a letterof 1892 toit was thesetwo poems; in setting Wolfsays: 'I share the view thatSchubertwas not successful Kauffmann, Briefe ofGoethe'(HugoWolfs poemsto musicin thespirit timeto setthesesplendid a post-Wagnerian for reserved ed. Edmund Hellmer,Berlin, 1903, p. 25). an Emil Kauffmann, London, 1951, p. 248. 23 Frank Walker, Hugo Wolf:a Biography,

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