“To be read in Winter” (Im Winter zu lesen) is inscribed at the beginning of Wilhelm Müller’s collection of poetry published in 1824 under the colorful title “Poems from the Posthumous Papers of a Travelling Horn Player” (Gedichte aus den hinterlassenen Papeieren eines reisenden Waldhornisten). The poems that comprise Schubert’s two epic song cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise can be found in this anthology, and as the poet commands, we open the book on these poems in a snowy February, with some distance from the romantic, idealistic nineteenth century in which they were created. Both cycles deal with the journey of solitary protagonists, two romantic heroes who have been disappointed by love and grapple, each in their own way, with a world that cannot contain their ideals and their dreams. The miller of the first cycle is the consummate dreamer. Searching for purpose in life, he is waylaid by his idea of love, embodied in the miller-maid (with whom he scarcely actually converses). His tender, hyper-emotional, and obsessive temperament is reflected in Schubert’s musical language—lyrical, delicately ornamented, and with a preponderance of static, strophic songs (what is better than repetition for wallowing in one’s feelings?). In contrast, the protagonist of Winterreise is an emotional stoic, a true realist on a journey through a stark inner landscape, “without rest and seeking rest” (der Wegweiser). Schubert depicts this character with stark, hollowed-out harmonies and a more jagged and effortful vocal line. Both characters are true romantics, more concerned with their inner, emotional world than the outer world, whose rules and landscapes they find inhospitable. The miller finds companionship only in the brook; the traveler’s only companions are (briefly) a crow, and later, a poor hurdy-gurdy player who seems to be a reflection of himself (much like the Doppelgänger we encounter at the end of Schwanengesang).
Die Schöne Müllerin was composed in 1823, after Schubert had received his syphilis diagnosis and during his initial struggle with the disease. Schubert began work on Winterreise at the end of 1826, and completed the cycle during the final stages of his illness in 1827-28. The songs that comprise Schwanengesang were composed in the final months of Schubert’s life and published posthumously, with the decision to group them as a continuous cycle coming not from Schubert himself, but from his publisher. Still, the seven settings of poems by Ludwig Rellstab and six poems by Heinrich Heine share common themes of longing and separation from the beloved—a theme that was likely a nod to Beethoven, to whom Rellstab initially sent this group of poems. Beethoven’s unique song cycle An die ferne Geliebte (To the distant beloved) would have been familiar to both Rellstab and Schubert, and we find reflections of that work in both the poetry and music of Schwanengesang.
One can find references to other music of Beethoven as well. For example, the C minor funeral march of “Krieger’s Ahnung” reminds us of the funeral march from the Eroica symphony, and the opening of “Der Atlas” seems to recall the opening of Beethoven’s final piano sonata, Op. 111. One can’t help but see echoes of Schubert’s two Müller cycles as well. We begin in “Liebesbotschaft” with an address to a “rustling little brook, so silver and light”, in G major, the same key that depicts the miller’s brook in Müllerin. The mood of loneliness, loss, and isolation in “In der Ferne” and “Ihr Bild” is depicted with stark and spare writing that recalls similar moments in Winterreise. Finally, we end the cycle with “DerDoppelgänger,” a bleak and eerie encounter with a figure in the street, a serenader perhaps, who reminds us of the hurdy-gurdy player we meet at the end of Winterreise (“Der Leiermann”). Perhaps not coincidentally, the original keys of these two songs is the same (B major).
It is tempting to look for clues in these songs to Schubert’s life—traces of his personal despair at his failing health, or reflections on his illness. In Schwanengesang’s “Am Meer,” for example, we hear about a tryst that ends with the protagonist being “poisoned” by his lover’s tears. And yet, like in all of Schubert’s music, one finds an abundance of both joy and sadness, both always intermingled as two sides of the same coin. The protagonists of all three cycles are fueled by a continual process of longing for a beloved that is far away, or perhaps unattainable. For all three, the act of longing (“Sehnsucht”) is what drives them, and the only possible ending is to be subsumed either by nature (spoiler alert: our miller drowning himself in the brook) or by music (our traveler disappearing into the mist with the organ-grinder). In the final song of Schwanengesang, “Der Doppelgänger,” we feel Schubert’s gaze upon us, as we find echoes of our own experience in these hauntingly beautiful songs.
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