Schubert:
“Gretchen am spinnrade", op.2, D.118
Schubert wrote this song in 1814, when he was about 17 years
old. He had just ended his short career in the Imperial Court’s chapel choir in
Vienna two years earlier when his voice broke. Antonio Salieri had been
teaching him while he was there, and those lessons continued until 1815. In
1814 he began his education to become a teacher like his father, and got a job
at his father’s school. He continued his education until about 1818 and
composed many pieces while he was there. It was during this time that he began
composing Lieder (alongside string quartets, operas and symphonies), the first
based on Goethe’s poems. After he left the college, he dedicated his full
attention to composing and a career in music.
a) Schubert
was inspired to write this song after reading Goethe’s dramatic story of Faust. In this story, a man, Faust,
sells his soul to the devil in exchange for a carefree, exciting life. The girl
he meets in the story, Gretchen, is the narrator of Schubert’s song (translated
as), “Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel”. In this scene, she has fallen in love
with Faust and sits in her room spinning yarn and expressing her anguish and
feelings about her love. As was common at the time, this song was probably
first performed at a private salon concert (as was most of Schubert’s music).
b) “Gretchen am spinnrade" was Schubert’s
first Lied. Before him, the Lied was a German language song with a folk-music
style. It was simple and strophic (as seen as authentic to folk-culture), with
the piano as accompaniment. However, Schubert transformed the genre to be more
expressive and explorative of human emotion, with the accompaniment emphasizing
and aiding the expression of the text. As a Lied, this song is a solo voice accompanied
by piano, but the music reflects the drama of the text, rather than being simple
and folksy.
c) This song
is through-composed instead of the traditional strophic form; each stanza of
the song reflects the developing emotion and message of the lyrics. It changes to
distant keys multiple times throughout, rather than repeating the same melody
line for each stanza. In a traditional Lied, the accompaniment only provides a
harmonic structure for the melody, but Schubert commonly gave his piano part a
dramatic role. In this song, the piano acts as her spinning wheel – the right
hand replicating the sound of the wheel, and the left the sound of the bobbin. A
little over halfway through the song, it builds to a dramatic moment (“ah, his
kiss!”) where the accompaniment stops briefly, as if the girl pauses her
spinning distractedly before continuing – an extremely unusual moment for a
Lied.
d) Schubert’s
deviations from the classical Lied are clearly indicative of the Romantic
period. The lyrics develop the deep feelings and thoughts of the girl,
exploring her inner emotional turmoil, mirrored by the accompaniment in distant
keys and harmonies. The Romantic artists valued this intense, individual
expression of emotion that overcomes the rational and controlled expression common
to the Classical period. Schubert took the original and simple design of the
Lied and “broke the rules” to develop it into a deeply expressive and
interesting genre.
Sources:
I loved this piece when I performed it! It is a tough piece, and I love how the piano is a spinning wheel for the majority of the song.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Michaela. The piano follows the singer's voice, fulfilling it's purpose as an expressive addition to her dramatic singing. I feel like at the accelerando this becomes most apparent.
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