Schubert’s Song Sets
Title: Schubert’s Song Sets
Author: Michael Hall
Publisher: Ashgate, Aldershot
Other Details: ISBN 0-7546-0798-4, 290pp, musical examples, bibliography, indices.
Date Published: 2003
Review
In recent years, Ashgate, the specialist musical book publisher from Aldershot, has produced a number of interesting books with a Schubertian theme. In addition to two collections of essays (Schubert Studies and Schubert the Progressive) both edited by Brian Newbould, and Lorraine Byrne’s Schubert's Goethe Settings, is this unusual book by Michael Hall. Hall (a member of SIUK, now living in the south of France) was the founder, conductor and artistic director of the Northern Sinfonia Orchestra, and was a BBC music producer for many years.
By the term ‘song set’, Hall refers to each of the collections of songs compiled or specially composed for publication as a single opus number. There are 42 such song sets, of which 9 were specially composed for publication and the others were all assembled from individual songs composed at some stage in the past. Most sets contain 2, 3 or 4 songs, though there are three sets with more than this. The song sets, he asserts in an introductory essay of 27 pages, have been neglected because the features binding the songs into a set have been virtually ignored, so they have been treated as arbitrary collections. This was not helped, of course, by the main collections of songs being in chronological (Gesamtausgabe) or ‘popularity’ (Peters) order. But with the Hyperion edition and programmable CD and MP3 players, we now have the chance to very easily hear these collections as Schubert intended.
Hall argues that each of the sets has a coherence, provided by the chosen texts, the musical structure, or other linking ideas, and that most sets progress from a state of stress to a state of tranquillity. He asserts that several sets ‘could only have been put together by Schubert’. He provides examples where he believes that the manner of settings songs was driven by their inclusion in a set: for example Malcolm’s song (Lied des gefangenen Jägers, D843) from the Lady of the Lake set is in the style of a dashing polonaise, to conform with the structure of the set, which is at odds with the text. He also argues that 3 and 4 song sets follow usually follow a conventional structure. In a 3 song set (e.g. Op 4., Schmidt of Lübeck’s Der Wanderer, D489, Morgenlied, D685 and Wandrers Nachtlied I, D224) the middle song provides the reason for the transformation between the first and third songs (which in the Op. 4 case, is provided by the contentment of Werner’s birds in contrast to Schmidt’s Wanderer’s distress and Goethe’s Wanderers peace of mind). In a 4 song set (e.g. Op. 3, Goethe’s Schäfers Klagelied, D121, Meeres Stille, D216, Heidenröslein, D 257 and Jägers Abendlied, D368) the songs are divided into two pairs, each consisting of contrasting songs, with the progression from stress to tranquillity happening in two phases.
In the 200 or so pages after the introductory essay, Hall takes us through each of the sets in Opus number order, from Op. 3 to Op 106. This section, just like John Reed’s The Schubert Song Companion is not really something you sit down and read straight through, but rather is reference material, to check details out, or to provide information to help to appreciate a recital or CDs. The format for each opus is similar. It starts with introductory details about the songs, D numbers, dates, etc., with a description of the structure or linking idea that provides the coherence to the set. We are then given the texts (in English translations, with a description of the stanza structure), and a short analysis of each song.
The final section of the book is a longer analysis of the Heine settings from Schwanengesang, which runs to 30 pages. He sees the structure as being somewhat like a 4 movement instrument work, where the last three songs form the finale. He points out that those (such as Brown, Goldschmidt and Richard Kramer) that have said that the set should be sung in the order of the poems in Heine’s Die Heimkehr have simply not understood that the set is structured following the conventions Schubert followed in all his sets.
The book is nicely produced, with no illustrations but plenty of musical examples. It is fairly technical at times, but still readable by those without the technical background. It is a little out of the ordinary, and well worth adding to your library. It will provide new insights (not all of which you will necessarily accept) into well loved songs, and make you want to go back and listen to them again, and you can’t ask for more than that.