WINTERLIED 441 WINTERLIED Song of Winter Ludwig Hélty 13 May 1816 A minor D401 Not in Peters GA XX no.220 — Kei- me Blu-men blihn ur das Win -tar grin bickt__durch Sil ~ ber-hiil - len, No flowers bloom, only the wintergreen peeps through the silver covering; only tiny red and white flowers, blossoming out of the ice, fill the window Ah, no birdsong rings out with merry note, only the wintry tune of the titmouse that flits about the window chirping for food. Love flees the grove where the little birds were wont to nest in the green shade; love flees the grove and comes indoors. Cold January, in truth Ishall not feel your frosts here among the love-games. Reign for ever, cold January! The poem dates from 1773. The autograph (Washington, LC) is included in a manuscript dated 13 May 1816; but Schubert's ‘May’ is difficult to distinguish from his ‘March’, and Deutsch reads the earlier date. The song was first published in the Gesamtausgabe in 1895. The plaintive minor 6/8 melody has a strong affinity with Ins stille Land, which belongs to March—April 1816, and both may be regarded as near relations of the D minor and A minor versions of Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt. Both the mood and the style seem to belong especially to 1816. WINTERREISE The Winter Journey Wilhelm Miller February —October 1827 D911 Peters I pp.54—121 GA nos. 517-40 NSA IV vol.4 The text is by Wilhelm Miller, the author of Die schéne Mullerin, and both cycles were published under the general title of ‘Seventy-seven Poems from the Posthumous Papers of a Travelling Horn-player’. Malller's title is Die Winterreise, but both the autograph and the first edition of Schubert's cycle omit the article The poems which make up the complete Winterreise were assembled gradually. ‘Twelve poems were published in Urania, a Leipzig almanac, in 1823, and these correspond exactly with the songs in Schubert's part I, both in content and in sequence. Ten more appeared in the same year in a Breslau periodical. Finally Miller added two more, Die Post and Tduschung, and rearranged the whole cycle in a new order when it was published in 1824 in Dessau as vol.II of the ‘Posthumous Papers’. This volume was dedicated ‘to the master of German song Carl Maria von Weber, as a token of friendship and respect’ Schubert's autograph, now in New York (PML], establishes beyond’ doubt that the two parts of the cycle were written at different times. Part I is dated ‘February 1827’ at the beginning. The source was Urania, and Schubert wrote the word ‘Finis’ at the end of no. 12, a clear indication that at that time he regarded these twelve songs as making up the complete cycle, It is of interest that in this first draft the last song, Einsamkeit, was written in D minor, the key of the opening song. There is a publisher's copy of the autograph of part lin Vienna (SB). It is dated 1827 and has corrections in Schubert’s hand. The censor’s stamp on it is dated 24 October 1827 Part I was published by Haslinger in January 1828. Part Il of the autograph is a fair copy, dated October 1827, made from earlier drafts now for the most part lost. It is headed ‘Continuation of Winterreise’ and the songs442 WINTERREISE are numbered 1-12. With one exception, Schubert set the additional songs in the order in which they appear in Miller's final version, as the following list makes clear: Schubert's order for part II Position in Muller's cycle 1 Die Post 6 2 Der greise Koft 10 3 Die Krihe un 4 Letzte Hoffnung 12 5 Im Dorfe 13 6 Der stiirmische Morgen 14 7 Téuschung 15 8 Der Wegweiser 16 9 Das Wirtshaus 17 10 Mut 23 11 Die Nebensonnen 20 12 Der Leiermann 24 I will be noted that Schubert interchanged Mut and Die Nebensonnen, for reasons which will be discussed later. The songs were renumbered 13-24 in the first edition. Against this background it is possible to reconstruct the probable sequence of events. Schubert came across the Urania publication in February 1827 (Schober said he found it in his (Schober’s} library) and set the twelve poems he found there in that month. Spaun testified to his absorption in this project at about this time (Memoirs pp.137-8}; and it was probably the first part of the cycle which he planned to introduce to his friends at Schober's on 4 March, when he failed to turn up (Docs. nos.819~20). Later in the year he found the complete cycle in the Dessau publication of 1824 and decided to set the additional poems. Most were probably drafted that summer, but at least one seems to have been sketched at Graz in September (see no.23). The fair copy was written out in October, but Haslinger held up publication of part IT until part was well launched. There is a well-founded tradition, vouched for by Ferdinand Schubert and Spaun (Memoirs pp.28 and 38] and supported by Haslinger and by Schindler, that the last work Schubert did was to correct the proofs of part II on his deathbed. Part Il was published in December 1828. The opus number for the cycle was 89 There are close links between the two song cycles, and if we are to make a proper assessment of Schubert's greatness as a song-writer they should be seen as complementary Looked at in isolation it is possible to underrate the earlier work as no more than a charming essay in popular whimsy; and it is easy to overestimate the suicidal despair of Winterreise, and to ignore the stoic resolution of its end. There is a philosophical dimension to both cycles. Together they constitute the greatest achievement in the history of song; moreover they provide us with @ unique insight into the development of Schubert's own mind and art. Both works owe their existence to Miller's gift for the short evocative lyric in what might be called the sophisticated folksong tradition, and to his invention of the narrative thread. Both achieve their unity and their cumulative power by means of a subtle control ~ whether consciously exercised or not is beside the point - of pace, rhythm, Bewegung and tonality. But there are profound differences between them. The Schéne Miillerin cycle has areal, though shadowy, plot involving three principal characters, though we sce them all through the eyes of the young miller. The listener is allowed to participate, in an oblique and allusive way, in the development of the drama, and the mood changes from eager expectation at the beginning to Romantic glorification of death as the only possible consummation at the end. Winterreise, on the other hand, is a wholly interior drama There is no plot, no real change of circumstances, and little change of mood except from bitter irony to a resolute defiance. The only human figure to penetrate the closed circleWINTERREISE 443 of the hero’s despair is the pitiable hurdy-gurdy man in the last song, and he belongs to the same tribe as the Harper in Wilhelm Meister. His quarrel is not with individual wrongs, but with fate itself, This gives to the protagonist of Winterreise a stature as a Romantic hero, as the artist figure at war with society and with fate. Significantly, the definitive tragedy has happened before the cycle opens. There is no villain in the piece except the nature of things. This change of tone in part reflects the change in Schubert's own circumstances between 1823 and 1827. In those four years the political climate had become more illiberal, standards of taste had declined, and Schubert had been obliged to come to terms with his own chronic illness. The most perceptive comment came from Schubert's friend, the poet ‘Mayrhofer: 'It now seems to be in order to mention two poems of Wilhelm Miller's which constitute a more extensive cycle, and permit of a more penetrating glimpse into the composer's mind. Opening with a joyful song of roaming, the mill songs depict love in its awakening, its deceptions and hopes, its delights and sorrows ... Not so with “The Winter Journey”’, the very choice of which shows how much more serious the composer had become. He had been long and seriously ill, had gone through shattering experiences, and life for him had shed its rosy colour; winter had come for him. The poet's irony, rooted in despair, appealed to him, he expressed it in cutting tones. I was painfully moved’ (Memoirs p.15) Beyond this, the protagonist in Winterreise is a more tragic figure than the young miller in the earlier cycle, not only because his isolation and alienation are more complete, but because he is denied the consolation of death. At the climax of Die schéne Miillerin, Trockne Blumen sounds a triumphant fanfare over the grave of the rejected lover (‘Denn Blimlein alle/Heraus, heraus!/Der Mai ist kommen/Der Winter ist aus!’). At the corresponding point in Winterreise, however, the symbolism of Das Wirtshaus is un- ambiguous. There is to be no place for the outcast in the cool Inn of Death - ‘Nun weiter denn, nur weiter, /Mein treuer Wanderstab!’ Like Byron's Manfred, he is condemned to suffer without respite; unlike Wagner's hero, he is denied even the solace of redemption through love; his fate is a life in death, relieved only by the comradeship of the pathetic hurdy-gurdy man. The organic unity of the cycle is largely a matter of tonality and Bewegung, though Gerald Moore, in the preface to his study of the song cycles (pp.xiii-xiv) identifies a recurrent ascending phrase. The wanderer’ s footsteps echo through the cycle in avariety of guises, usually in 2/4 time and in a minor key. At the other extreme the songs of derangement and alienation, like Friihlingstraum, Téuschung, Die Nebensonnen, Der Leiermann, are in triple time and take A major/minor as their tonal centre. Another group, more static and contemplative, is based upon E major/minor. But although these tonal associations play an important part in our apprehension of the work's form, they cannot easily be reduced to a rational scheme, and the fact that Schubert himself changed the key of several songs before publication makes it more difficult to find one. There is an extensive literature, of which the following recent studies should be noted: J. Armitage-Smith, ‘Schubert's Winterreise, part I: the sources of the musical text’, MQ, LX, 1974, pp.20-36; Feil; E. McKay, ‘Schubert's Winterreise reconsidered’, MR, XXXVIII, 1977, pp.94~100; Moore, 75-172