Introduction

The devastating impact of Franz Schubert’s Winterreise arises from our identification with its primary persona. We walk with the wanderer, privy to his thoughts, and imagine ourselves in his shoes, psychologically associating ourselves with the authorial creation. Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin also inspires identification, but our rapport with its central character gradually grows tenuous. We witness the journeyman’s¹ enthusiasm, but become troubled by his choices and perceptions, wondering why common sense or rationality do not intervene. Both cycles set Wilhelm Müller’s poetry, feature rejected unfortunates, and address mortality. Yet we regard and respond to their focal figures differently. Die schöne Müllerin solicits sympathy for its greenhorn, encouraging us to understand his feelings and regret his unhappiness. Nevertheless, as Die schöne Müllerin unfolds, we gradually retreat, distancing ourselves from the journeyman. In contrast, Winterreise elicits empathy for its outcast, inducing us to share his emotions and experience similar distress. Consequently, Winterreise evokes our own existential fears as we are drawn near to the wanderer.

Our identification with the protagonists of Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise depends on Müller’s portrayals. But Schubert’s music reifies Müller’s characters and reveals their interiority. Studied side by side, the cycles mutually inform and illuminate.

To begin, narrative summaries of Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise will establish the cycles’ dramatic foundations for identification and enable comparison.² Next, three factors that influence identification will be explored: form, texture, and contextual processes. Surveys of the cycles’ song forms suggest that formal diversity and structural complexity, rather than simplicity, may enhance identification by demanding and gaining more involved interpretation. Similarly, textural change and complexity appear to promote identification through heightened engagement. Finally, characteristic contextual processes manipulate expectation and enhance dramatic climaxes in certain songs, intensifying identification. Given the richness of Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, comprehensive analysis is impossible. And superiority won’t be decided. But the framework and observations provided here should prompt further inquiry into identification as well as new investigations of narrative, form, texture, and contextual processes within these monuments. Let’s start with their stories.

The Narratives of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise

In Die schöne Müllerin, a miller’s helper with wanderlust leaves his master and encounters a babbling brook that leads him to another mill. The journeyman finds work there, plus a maiden who infatuates him. Grateful but curious, he wonders if the maiden or the brook had drawn him. At the mill, his tiring labor dispirits him because it doesn’t gain the maiden’s attention. So he asks the brook if she loves him, since he’s sure she should have seen his interest. No answer arises. One morning when the eager admirer greets the maiden at her window, she turns away. Undeterred, he plants forget-me-nots below her window as a gentle gesture. Perhaps it works, for one evening, the two sit beside the brook, observing the moon and the stars mirrored in its flow. But the simple swain, who watches her eyes move from the water to him within its reflections while she waits for a word, is too shy to speak and becomes spellbound by the brook’s babbling. When rain falls, all blurs, she says goodbye, then ups and leaves. Daylight finds him not disheartened but ecstatic, wishing to silence the stream, millwheels, and birds to proclaim that the maiden is his. His heart bursting with joy, the young man can’t sing, fearing self-revelation, so he ties a green ribbon around his lute and hangs it on a wall to avoid temptation. When the maiden admires the ribbon (green is her favorite color), the fellow sends it to her, hoping she ties it in her hair. Unfortunately, a passing hunter attracts the maiden, vexing the journeyman. Perceiving rejection, hating the color green, and fixated on hunting, he becomes preoccupied with death, wishing for a verdant grave. Morose, the unfortunate consoles himself with the thought that if he were buried with the maiden’s flowers, her remorseful tears would raise new blooms over his grassy mound in spring. Conversing with the brook, the sad soul ventures that when a lovesick heart dies, everything mourns. But the brook differs, asserting such death provides release from sorrow and brings new life. Persuaded of the brook’s good will, while wondering how it knows love, the fellow perceives its flow’s relief. So, he bids it to continue. Ultimately, only the brook remains, having welcomed the journeyman to watery rest with a lullaby.

In Winterreise, an ardent suitor, mortified by his beloved’s marriage to a rich man, slips away from the scene of his rejection, leaving “good night” traced in snow on her gate. With the wind-whipped weathervane mockingly creaking atop her house, he realizes it’d earlier signaled her fickleness and her family’s indifference. Frozen tears fall from the outcast’s cheeks, surprising him, for he’s unaware of his weeping and his waning sensitivity. Curiously, he imagines, the freezing weather has dulled his pain yet preserved the woman’s image within his now-numb heart as a souvenir. Should his heart thaw, he muses, her image would drain away. Passing a familiar linden tree, which seems to bid him to stay and rest, the fugitive closes his eyes and resists consolation, shunning the tree’s warm memories and sheltering comfort for a cold road. Yet its rustle continues calling after he leaves. While the glacial chill freezes his burning tears as they fall into the snow, he is sure that their fervent glow will return when they melt and run into the brook by his beloved’s house. Like the nearby river, now ice-encrusted, the exile suspects that his now hardened heart also might hide a torrent, and wonders if it, too, sees its reflection in the river’s frozen flow. Anxious to leave town and escape its memories, yet sorely tempted to glance backward toward his ex-sweetheart’s house, he doesn’t succumb. Instead, the fugitive follows a flickering “will-o’-the-wisp” into rocky chasms below the town, wending his way in the dark along a dry stream bed into wilderness. Later, an abandoned hut provides refuge though no respite, for his body aches and his heart stings. Nevertheless, he sleeps, dreaming of spring and his beloved, only to wake up cold and alone, ever more wretched in the morning stillness. A distant posthorn makes his heart pound, reminding of the town and prompting him to seek news, but he doesn’t respond. Three omens – including frost that greyed the young man’s black hair, a crow that trailed him as if he were prey, and a leaf that clung to a tree branch and fluttered like his hope – all forewarn but don’t daunt him. Barking dogs in a nearby village, the poor fellow figures, might disturb its residents’ dreams, but he has no more dreams nor any need for further delay. So he ventures into the now-stormy morning, led on by another illusory light. Following disused paths and ignoring city signposts, the outcast relentlessly pursues solitude, reaching a graveyard where he might rest for a while, yet the cemetery holds none for him. Without sleep, and without any particular goal, he pushes forward against wind and storm, driven by faithless and fatalistic courage. Phantom suns at the morning horizon transfix him, prompting the figment that since his beloved’s bright eyes are gone from his life, his last source of light might as well follow. Outside another village, the wanderer sees a barefoot and benumbed hurdy-gurdy player grinding alone, ignored except by snarling dogs. Perceiving their similar situations and parallel prospects, the wanderer asks: “Shall I go with you? Will you play your organ to my songs?”

The Journeyman, the Wanderer, and Us

Today, some aspects of these stories seem senseless. Who abandons family, friends, community, connections, and job for utter uncertainty? Who chats with a brook or naps in a boneyard? Even assuming dysfunction, certain parts of these narratives remain foreign, incomprehensible, or indeterminate. Each protagonist transforms from naïf to reject to wretch, a progression few of us know. Which conclusion is more tragic – a suicide or a shattering – is debatable. So is whether either story offers catharsis. Yet somehow these tales prompt us to suspend disbelief and identify with their characters, albeit in different ways and to varying degrees.

In Die schöne Müllerin, portrayal of a detailed past, unexpected immaturity, extreme behavior, and a supernatural context suppresses identification in favor of observation. Winterreise also presents extreme behavior, but its narrative’s absorbing events and compelling interiority prompt self-projection. With fewer historical specifics and no supernatural presence, Winterreise’s evocative context elicits imaginative compensation that augments engagement. Die schöne Müllerin features a more traditional plot, variations on common characters, familiar situational elements, foreshadowing, decisive action, plus an epilogue, all of which would induce and reinforce an observational mindset. But it would seem that the focus on thoughts, feelings, and reactions in Winterreise hits home hard by eliciting deep-seated resonances within unguarded and receptive listeners. In any event, certain traits and choices of the central characters induce identification within us. The more we share with a character, the more we identify with and self-project upon him or her. The more that is alien to our nature and experience, the more we disassociate.

All of us can recall being anxious and curious about the future like the journeyman of Die schöne Müllerin. We also can remember being excited by our attraction to another while being uncertain about reciprocation and impatient to be noticed. So it’s easy to accept the fellow’s initial anthropomorphizing of the brook as idle reverie. And it’s easy to recall feeling ignored or rebuffed by a heartthrob, hoping that a small kindness might help, as well as being too shy to respond at an opportune moment. Our resonance corresponds to identification. However, the young man’s misinterpretation of the maiden’s abrupt departure during their rendezvous represents an unsettling and alienating development. And while we may understand the journeyman’s jealousy of the hunter and perceive his depression about the maiden’s new fascination, his death wish and delusion regarding the young woman’s remorse are too much to bear. His final conversation with the brook elicits rue, as does his irrevocable choice, though both distance us. Serious questions arise. Was that last exchange between the journeyman and the brook imaginary … or was it real? Even more disconcerting is the sneaking suspicion that an apparently benign yet possibly malevolent being may have been present all along. Was the brook stalking him from the start? As engaged auditors of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin, we gradually distance ourselves in self-defense, pitying the fellow more than identifying with him. When the brook provides the song cycle’s epilogue in “Des Baches Wiegenlied,” with the journeyman nowhere near, we are left with a character we neither know nor trust – the brook – and feel pulled back into the scene while the longest song of the cycle unfolds. Although the narrative’s primary persona is no longer there, our identification with him continues, causing us to feel uneasy in the brook’s presence.

While few of us have suffered the humiliation endured by the wanderer in Winterreise, many have felt the need to escape after rejection or betrayal, recognizing signals of imminent rupture only in retrospect. In such situations, one is overwhelmed by emotions of differing intensities – unaware of some because others obscured, unsure what each was, uncertain how to respond, unclear what to do next – and one spurns solace to sublimate pain by whatever works. Of course, seeking seclusion in a nocturnal forest isn’t something most would do, nor is staying overnight in a derelict dwelling. However, we can accept these conceits for the sake of the story, the flow of the music, and our own curiosity. Surely sleep’s relief is a familiar experience, as is the shock of reality’s return at dawn. So is the inability to anticipate welling memories, along with the need for sidestepping situations that summon them. What Winterreise does so well in its second half is portray the wanderer’s gradual, inexorable descent into a much darker place, one that all of us have glimpsed or can imagine: a depressive and disoriented state in which perceptions and judgement should become suspect, but do not, wherein one steels oneself to press ahead, yet without a clear goal, and through which wellbeing is not a priority, though it should be. While the wanderer doesn’t determinedly pursue oblivion, one senses that if Death, Fate, Nature, or some other claimant came for him, he wouldn’t resist. The “will-o’-the-wisps,” ominous indications, and phantom suns – all readily-explainable sights – seem more immediate and serious than they really are. But to the despondent outcast who’s not slept for twenty-four-plus hours, they’re plausible parts of his mental landscape. Happening upon an apparently similar soul at the end of Winterreise, he senses kinship and directly addresses another human for the first time. But serious questions arise here too. Is the hurdy-gurdy player real? What happens next? Unlike with Die schöne Müllerin, we do not feel drawn back into the final scene of Winterreise because we never really left. Instead, our identification becomes ever more intense, for we, from our vantage point, cannot fully fathom what’s going on in the winter wanderer’s mind or grasp what his future holds, only guess.

It’s not imperative that Müller and Schubert answer any open questions regarding Winterreise or Die schöne Müllerin. Posing them was the point. By providing a shared aesthetic experience to audiences, the artists increase affiliation, initiate conversation, and perhaps inspire kindness. Clear conclusions constrain cordial conversation! So, how does Schubert enhance our identification with Müller’s characters? Form, texture, and contextual processes assist.

Song Forms and Identification in Schubert’s Song Cycles

Formal diversity and structural complexity influence identification in Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. How they do so may surprise. Let’s examine the song forms.

Within Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin, eight Lieder exhibit simple strophic form, a design primarily founded on the principle of repetition. Each features a repeat-sign-bound span supportive of two to five sections, symbolizable as ||:A(+A′,[etc.]):||.³ These include “Das Wandern,” “Ungeduld,” “Morgengruss,” “Des Müllers Blumen,” “Mit dem grünen Lautenbande,” “Der Jäger,” “Die liebe Farbe,” and “Des Baches Wiegenlied.” Additionally, “Tränenregen” is semi-strophic. It begins with three sections involving repeated music but concludes with an abbreviated variation of that material that serves as a coda, representable as ||:A(+A′,A″):||A‴.

Four Lieder in Die schöne Müllerin employ the principles of contrast, return, and variation to produce ternary forms representable as ABA′. These include “Am Feierabend,” “Mein!,” “Pause,” and “Der Müller und der Bach.” “Der Neugierige,” portrayable as ABB′, just stresses the principles of contrast and variation, while “Trockne Blumen,” expressible as AB, only features contrast. Finally, five may be considered through-composed, including “Wohin?,” “Halt!,” “Danksagung an den Bach,” “Eifersucht und Stolz,” and “Die böse Farbe.” While these through-composed Lieder certainly draw upon the principles of contrast, return, and variation, plus that of development, all impress more as unique designs rather than instances of a common pattern.

Schubert’s Winterreise includes only one simple strophic song, “Wasserflut,” representable as ||:A(+A′):||. Another, “Gute Nacht,” features modified strophic form expressible as ||:A(+A′):||A″A‴. Its opening sections present the same accompanimental music, the third incorporates significant variation, while the last bears even more substantial developmental changes. “Der Lindenbaum” lacks repeat signs and stresses variation, presenting a structure symbolizable as AA′A″ that mixes strophic, ternary, and variational characteristics. Its second section presents a change of mode as well as reinterpreted material with a substantial extension, while the third features further reinterpretation, a brief extension, plus a postlude.

Even more diverse designs that draw upon the principles of contrast, return, variation, and development appear within Winterreise, including these thirteen:

ABA′B′

“Die Post”

ABA′B′coda

“Erstarrung”

ABA′

“Rückblick,” “Der greise Kopf,” “Die Krähe,” “Im Dorfe,” “Täuschung,” “Die Nebensonnen”

AA′

“Rast”

ABCA′B′C′

“Frühlingstraum”

AA′B

“Der Wegweiser,” “Mut!,” “Der Leiermann”

The preceding summary highlights two factors involving formal diversity and structural complexity in Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. One pertains to strophic form, the other to structural design distribution.

Strophic form, characteristic of folk-songs and ballads, bears a bardic impression and elicits a corresponding listening posture. We settle in for an intriguing tale or moralistic story with repeated music and predictable breaks in the action that permit brief relaxation. One might assume that predictable, familiar music, plus time for reflection, would assure automatic and deep immersion in the narrative, but that’s not always nor necessarily true. Strophic form’s archaic aura distances us, diminishing identification by regular reminding that its recitation relates to a character from the past. Strophic form is interruptive – our concentration recedes, then ramps – and this cannot help but affect our focus, and in turn, the intensity of our identification with the protagonist. And of course, some stories in strophic forms chafe at their repeated musical vehicles, with later verses not fitting as well as earlier.

Sectional and through-composed songs are less predictable in nature, and their unfolding structures often are more extended in length, more internally complex, and more responsive to their texts. One might assume because they require more continuous attention and sustained interpretation, even over divisions and pauses, that we become overwhelmed. However, their increased interpretive demands actually appear to intensify identification by immersing us in detail, encouraging recognition and association, both consciously and subliminally. Of course, Schubert’s engaging musical style contributes too!

Eight of the twenty Lieder in Die schöne Müllerin express simple strophic form, while just one of twenty-four in Winterreise does. With limited emphasis on that familiar form – which distracts by drawing attention to itself – and a great diversity of forms whose structural complexity requires a consistently high level of focus and interpretation, Winterreise seems to promote a correspondingly high level of identification with its primary persona. Engrossing us, Winterreise prompts perception of personal connection with its central character.

To sense how this is so, we may begin by comparing and contrasting increasingly complex Lieder from the two cycles, starting with two songs from Die schöne Müllerin. “Ungeduld” – a strophic song representable as ||:A(+A′,A″,A‴):|| – and “Tränenregen”– a semi-strophic song representable as ||:A(+A′,A″):||A‴. Both begin in A major and present outdoor vignettes sketched by the journeyman miller. In “Ungeduld,” the young man’s exuberant expression of love is infectious and unyielding, a portrait of bottled impatience. In “Tränenregen,” which recounts the rendezvous by the brook, his ardor remains, though more subdued as it is sustained through the first three spans. However, “Tränenregen” takes a surprising turn within its final section, where initially familiar material briefly tonicizes C major (m. 28), quickly returns to A major (m. 32), and closes in A minor (m. 36) to underscore the young man’s shattered reverie and his beloved’s abrupt departure. Its narrative and musical shifts demand more, and we contribute more while perceiving more.

“Gute Nacht,” the first Lied of Winterreise, offers an even greater interpretive challenge. Embodying modified strophic form – ||:A(+A′):||A″A‴ – its first three sections all feature tonal flow from D minor, to F major, to B♭ major before D minor returns, underscoring the fluidly shifting moods of the ex-suitor in front of his beloved’s house. The third presents changes in the main melody, plus an extension with a more prominent piano part, to portray rising regret as the protagonist prepares to leave. The final section brings a surprising switch to D major to convey rueful acceptance, though the postlude’s minor close bears (and bares!) genuine grief. For engaged listeners, the changes require more, we invest more, and we gain more.

“Der Lindenbaum,” from Winterreise, presents a design – AA′A″ – that might be considered either modified strophic or three-part form. Its piano part becomes increasingly energetic and expansive to portray enveloping elements and emotions as the wanderer weighs the tree’s offer of rest. The song’s contrasting central variant, which starts in minor, moves to major, and concludes with an extension (mm. 45–58), communicates the wanderer’s determination to reject the linden tree’s comfort and move on, even as cold winds blow off his hat. The final section of “Der Lindenbaum,” all in major, captures the diminishing pull of memory dominated by the ex-suitor’s desire to get away. The composition’s individuality and suggestiveness impel us to seek meaning, infer, recognize, connect, and understand. In turn, we cannot help but resonate with the emotions expressed by the wanderer character.

While the formal diversity and structural complexity of Schubert’s song cycles may only be generally compared, it would seem that Winterreise’s interpretive demands require considerable conscious concentration from engaged listeners and are apt to elicit substantial background processing of its narrative that may encourage identification with its protagonist. Texture appears to bear similar implications.

Texture and Identification in Schubert’s Song Cycles

The textures of Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, like much Western art music, may be characterized using visual terms. More specifically, textural elements within a given span of music may be interpreted as belonging to its foreground, middleground, or background.⁴ A Lied’s vocal melody, when present, predominates in the foreground. We focus on it like a painting’s subject. A bass line in the piano’s accompaniment, when conceived as a counterpoint to the vocal melody, belongs to the song’s middleground. It complements the more prominent part, enriching the structure while informing interpretation. If the bass is less distinguished, it may recede into the Lied’s background. Yet a bass line or an upper accompaniment strand may project into the foreground when the voice is absent or when the bass doubles the voice, or strive for attention within the middleground when interacting with the vocal melody. Harmonic accompaniment elements belong to the background. As this general overview suggests, the components of a song’s aural field may change roles rapidly in real time – they’re not always static. Texture enhances identification with the primary personae in various ways within Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, usually in conjunction with other elements, and sometimes achieves remarkable effects through brief and/or inconspicuous details in the middleground or even in the background. Let’s see how.

For instance, at the start of Die schöne Müllerin, the journeyman’s infectious energy may be perceived within the opening vocal phrases in mm. 4–7 and 8–11 of the first Lied, “Das Wandern,” which seem a bit rushed at three measures plus a pickup. Example 9.1 offers illustration.

Example 9.1 Die schöne Müllerin, “Das Wandern,” mm. 1–12⁵

Answered by the piano’s brief melodic responses (dʹ-fʹ-dʹ) that emerge from the rolling background in the right-hand part of mm. 7–8 and 11–12, these foreground/middleground textural alternations communicate youthful enthusiasm anyone can sense. The third phrase brings textural contrast through a seemingly more expansive and invigorating voice/bass duet that’s sequential in nature, while the last phrase highlights the voice’s repetitive and diminishing melody with undulating harmony in the background. Repeated four more times via the song’s strophic structure, the music of this song, with its jaunty physicality, visual suggestion, and textural variety, snags us for the rest of the cycle. Yes, there’s more than just texture involved here, but the shifts within “Das Wandern” contribute to its engaging and exhilarating impression.

Surely the shifting textures of “Der Neugierige” intimate the journeyman’s interiority in ways that inspire identification. Example 9.2 offers its first twelve measures.

Example 9.2 Die schöne Müllerin, “Der Neugierige,” mm. 1–12⁶

Gradually moving three times in its opening section (mm. 1–22) from a relatively thin, high, and delicate texture to a thicker, lower, and more resonant one, the Lied initially communicates his fluctuating curiosity by textural expansions in the middleground and background. The texture expands, flourishes, and then recedes. With the emergence of triple meter and undulating arpeggios of the second section, ushered in by the void of m. 22 which conveys a shift of focus that heightens tension, we can virtually see and share in the character’s contemplation as he queries the brook about his beloved’s feelings. And the recitative-like texture of mm. 33–40 seems to come out of nowhere, portraying a dramatic flight of imagination as he asks for a “yes” or “no” whether the miller’s daughter loves him, turning the request over and over in his mind as he wonders. Varying and evolving texture tells what’s going on inside the young man, which, in turn, encourages our identification with him.

Other textural features within Die schöne Müllerin portray interiority. For instance, the delicate, charming, and unexpected echo in the middleground of mm. 16–21 of “Morgengruss” would seem to suggest an ethereal image passing through the journeyman’s mind, at least on first hearing. The accompaniment of “Pause” evokes the lute, much of it unfolding so independently of the voice, mostly within the middleground, that the latter gains a distant, lost-in-thought quality indicative of the character’s reverie. Yet on three occasions (see mm. 33–35, 53–55, and 63–69), the piano part of “Pause” defers to the voice by retreating into the background, supporting brief recitative-like spans that suggest clear-minded thought. And while the accompaniment of “Mit dem grünen Lautenbande” also evokes the lute, its closer relationship with the foregrounded vocal line gives the Lied a more retrospective, even archaic quality, as if the young man had imagined himself somewhere in ages past. In contrast, the continuously-reiterated f♯ʹ of “Die liebe Farbe,” a persistent, even obsessive textural detail in the background, contributes to that song’s striking immediacy and savage irony. The series of changing and contrasting two-measure textural units within the first third of “Die böse Farbe” surely suggests internal anxiety – through texture we sense restlessness and anger. Finally, the inner-voice motion through most of “Des Baches Wiegenlied” surely portrays the murmuring and gentle flow associable with a lullaby, and because of its melodic independence, seems to reside in the middleground. Yet the compound perfect fifths and perfect octaves, expressed via half notes in mm. 1–15 and 20–25 within the background, are no less important to the closing Lied’s effect. Indeed, they produce an ambient spatiality unlike any heard earlier in the cycle, perhaps providing a hint of the journeyman’s repose. We sense some of what the fellow would seem to perceive through texture within the middlegrounds and backgrounds of Die schöne Müllerin. Winterreise exploits texture similarly.

However, the middlegrounds conveyed by the piano within Schubert’s second song cycle may seem even more teeming and individuated than those of Die schöne Müllerin. Their contents may change frequently and unpredictably, interacting with their foregrounds while maintaining considerable independence. Indeed, at times the middlegrounds of Winterreise even seem to provide competition with and distraction from the voice. Curiously, this seems to increase our focus on the Lied’s texted content and its nuances in the foreground. Engaged by the compelling narrative, the rich content, and Schubert’s intriguing style, we lean in. Remarkably, this seems to enhance our engagement and intensify our identification with the wanderer. Let’s examine evidence with illustrations.

Consider Example 9.3, a selective excerpt drawn from “Gute Nacht,” the first Lied of Winterreise, that presents essential foreground and middleground elements from an early span.

Example 9.3 Winterreise, “Gute Nacht,” mm. 15–26 (selective excerpt)⁷

As this suggests, separate accompanimental strands, each with its own melodic integrity, compete with the voice for our attention. The contrapuntal web they create with the foregrounded vocal melody places demands on the listener similar to that of fugue. Here, the aural portrait would seem to reflect the soon-to-be wanderer’s internal debate and anxiety as he prepares to leave. Our aural filtering here provides an analogous experience.

In Example 9.4, a full-content excerpt drawn from “Irrlicht,” the ninth Lied of Winterreise, the piano’s music certainly defers to the voice, yet is so individuated, as well as interactive with its more prominent partner, that their sum seems to represent concurrent dialogue.

Example 9.4 Winterreise, “Irrlicht,” mm. 17–28⁸

Here, the registrally shifting, distinctively articulated, texturally fluctuating, and orchestrally conceived piano part – much of which sounds higher than the tenor voice – attracts so much attention to itself in the middleground, that we must apply considerable concentration just to follow the quickly unfolding and densely expressive text. In this passage, which presents the second stanza of Müller’s poem, we’re able to share the wanderer’s perception of the darting will-o’-the-wisp as well as his recognition of its correspondence to the randomness of Fate. Our aural experience offers a hint of the journeyman’s visual experience.

In “Letzte Hoffnung,” the first vocal phrases almost seem to unfold in a separate channel, enveloped by metrically ambiguous activity in the middleground. Example 9.5 illustrates this.

Example 9.5 Winterreise, “Letzte Hoffnung,” mm. 4–15⁹

A listener’s ear is attracted from register to register in this span as the voice’s largely conjunct line holds sway. Capturing the wanderer’s visual observations and internal musings about the fate of leaves whipped by the wind and about to fall from their trees, which strike him as parallel to his own, this music demonstrates Schubert’s profound understanding of human psychology as well as any other in Winterreise.

Contrary to what one might imagine, increased textural complexity in Schubert’s Lieder seems to engage and intrigue more than it deters or fatigues, and this may have something to do with the composer’s personal style, which seems endlessly innovative and intrinsically evocative. However, his music also elicits expectations whose fulfillment is less immediate and more cumulative. Let’s look closer.

Contextual Processes and Identification in Schubert’s Song Cycles

Contextual processes – structural sequences that generate anticipation in advance of a climactic fulfilling event – appear more commonly in Schubert’s music than one might imagine.¹⁰ Within Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, contextual processes enhance identification in intriguing and idiosyncratic ways as they contribute to perceptions of momentum and unity.¹¹ Let’s observe several.

For instance, certain contextual processes feature a gradually ascending vocal ceiling.¹² In “Wohin?,” the second Lied of Die schöne Müllerin, the initially highest vocal pitch, notated as dʺ in m. 3, soon is exceeded by the notated eʺ in m. 13, which later is surpassed by the notated f♯ʺ in m. 33.¹³ But the then-expected gʺ that would complete this rising perfect fourth and resolve the leading tone in the voice of m. 33 waits until m. 71, just ten from the end. During this span, sensitive listeners experience their own subliminal expectation that parallels the uncertainty being conveyed by the character of the journeyman, portrayed by the singer, who describes being led along by a babbling brook, unsure where he is going, only to realize near the Lied’s conclusion that the water may be guiding him to another mill. Complemented by other musical factors, of course, this rising registral ceiling adds to the Lied’s dramatic momentum while encouraging listeners to identify with the character’s anticipation.¹⁴

In the next Lied, “Halt!,” an ascent from a notated eʺ in m. 12 to an fʺ in m. 16 would seem to have stalled by m. 35 with a repetition of that fʺ. However, the pitch gʺ, reached in m. 40 and reiterated in m. 44, enables a coincidence of the vocal line’s apex with the word “Himmel” (sky). There within the text’s narrative, a shining sun seems to confirm that the millhouse where the still-searching young man has stopped is where he was meant to be. As listeners, we experience an arrival effect contributed in part by this rising vocal ceiling.

And in the seventh Lied of Die schöne Müllerin, “Ungeduld,” an even more anxious and agitated stepwise rise in the vocal ceiling from a notated c♯ʺ (m. 9) to dʺ (m. 11) to eʺ (m. 13) to f♯ʺ (m. 14) to g♮ʺ (m. 15) and – after a bit of a delay – finally to aʺ (mm. 21, 23), conveys the fellow’s waves of impatience that unfold over the four verses. In these songs from Die schöne Müllerin, rising vocal ceilings elicit subtle effects of anticipation and arrival, portraying the persona’s interiority via expectations whose fulfillment we may share.

Contextual processes founded on rising vocal ceilings communicate interiority within Winterreise too. For instance, in “Letzte Hoffnung,” a gradual ascent involving the notated pitches c♭ʺ, cʺ, dʺ, (e♭ʺ’s skipped!), fʺ, g♭ʺ, and gʺ communicates the height of anguish as the wanderer speaks (via the singer!) of weeping on the grave of his hopes as he waits to see if a leaf will fall. And in “Der Wegweiser,” a determined rise over a longer span involving the sequence gʹ-aʹ-b♭ʹ-cʺ-dʺ-eʺ-g♭ʺ(=f♯ʺ)-gʺ reaches its height in m. 52 as the character speaks of wandering on relentlessly and restlessly, seeking yet not finding rest. There the final pitch sounds over a climactic cadential six-four, never to be stabilized through harmonization by the tonic triad within the space of the song. We, as listeners, can identify with the wanderer’s anxiety through our own unfulfilled expectations, since the resolution of the song’s expansive ascent only may be imagined over a later instance of the tonic triad.

Certain other rising vocal ceilings, including those in “Die Wetterfahne” and “Gefror’ne Tränen,” fade without ever reaching climactic arrivals at anticipated tonic triad tones in the voice. Similarly, all four sections of “Die Post” seem to suggest that the voice eventually will achieve the notated pitch gʺ – the third of the E♭ major tonic triad – yet the goal remains tantalizingly out of reach. Frustrating expectations to communicate impressions of inadequacy, these ascents underscore the cycle’s narrative as they reflect the wanderer’s dejection. It would seem that, following Die schöne Müllerin, Schubert continued to explore the expectation-engendering potential of rising registral ceilings in Winterreise, creating ever more subtle instances that communicate frustration felt by the wanderer by not providing anticipated arrivals within the music. Along with the matters of form and texture, it seems clear that much remains to be discovered regarding Schubert’s rising registral ceilings, as well as his incorporation of contextual processes more generally.

A master of manipulating his listener’s responses, Franz Schubert employs subtle musical means in his song cycles to enable us to sense emotions and reactions similar to those portrayed by his characters. If we’re engaged, we identify with them even more through what we perceive as shared experience. In turn, our immersion within his narratives is all the more vivid.¹⁵

Afterthoughts

Perhaps the most admirable achievements of Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise are their persuasive prompts to sympathize and empathize with their central characters. Each encourages us to descend deeper into our own imaginations and reflect upon our own responses to their stories. In turn, these masterpieces may be interpreted as entreaties to become more sympathetic and empathetic human beings. Within today’s turbulent world and dimming future, such sensitivity seems in short supply. Indeed, the pleas for compassion within Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise may be among the greatest legacies of Franz Schubert’s Romanticism.

Connecting Threads

Arguably the most fundamental element linking text and music across the cycle is the intimation that the central figure is a musician. His appeal to the hurdy-gurdy man in the final three lines: “Soll ich mit dir geh’n? / Willst zu meinen Liedern / Deine Leier dreh’n?” (Shall I go with you? / Will you play your organ / To my songs?), can be taken as an indication of the protagonist’s calling rather than as metaphorical. Ian Bostridge has explored the traveler’s possible status as a music tutor in the girl’s household, while emphasizing Müller’s wish to avoid defining the character too precisely.⁷ Further indication is planted in “Mut!,” where the protagonist sings in defiance of the harsh conditions through which he journeys (and the depressive side of his own feelings): “Wenn mein Herz im Busen spricht, / Sing’ ich hell und munter” (When my heart speaks in my breast, / I sing loudly and gaily).

Another overarching element is the intensity with which the poet’s words portray the winter journey. The effects involved include extreme contrast and the evocation of startling images. Schubert’s setting creates a comparable intensity from across the spectrum at his disposal, including rhythmic profile, melodic shaping, motivic usage, harmony, texture, dynamics, relationship of voice and piano, and function of the piano accompaniment. All these, overlapping with topical reference, have the power to convey what words alone could not achieve, and to enhance or affirm what the words express. Additional details such as a specific contrapuntal device, or fragment of word-painting, can throw a spotlight on the text at individual moments.

Used in these ways, the music may add to the text Schubert’s personal reading of it, especially where the poet has created ambiguity or uncertainty rather than giving explicit definition to his ideas. In “Gute Nacht,” where the girl speaks of love and the mother “even of marriage,” with the move from the tonic minor to the relative major and then into its subdominant (see Example 10.1, mm. 15–23), Schubert allies the major mode with a diatonic chordal style of hymn-like serenity.⁸ This passage gains a touching hopefulness, expressed musically in the upwards reach of the melody and its sequentially related phrases. Notably absent from Schubert’s setting here is any trace of the bitterness associated with the betrayal that followed those promising signals from mother and daughter. Schubert’s music recaptures the moments of pure hope, untainted by hindsight.

Example 10.1 “Gute Nacht,” mm. 15–29⁹

That excursus into the major throws into sharper relief the return to the tonic minor for the ensuing lines: “Nun ist die Welt so trübe, / Der Weg gehüllt in Schnee” (Now the world is so gloomy, / The road shrouded in snow). Here Schubert’s repeat of the paired lines is unable to move in key, remaining mired in the protagonist’s mood and the surrounding scene. In both text and music, “Gute Nacht” prepares us for many other instances where references to past happiness and comfort are contrasted with present hardship and misery. Schubert’s musical treatment gives love remembered a distinctive profile, as he does variously with the other main themes of Winterreise: loss, loneliness, death, and the winter journey itself. “Gute Nacht” introduces elements in both words and music that will be fundamental to the cycle as a whole.

Altogether a sense of the magnitude of the protagonist’s situation, and of the epic journey he undertakes, issues from the cycle in both text and music. The prolonging of harmonic progressions, as in “Rast,” at the matching ends of verses 2 and 4 in each paired set of verses, corresponds to the prolonged agony the wanderer carries with him. The extended diminished seventh chord heard at mm. 21–23 (see Example 10.2) and again at mm. 51–53, prefacing the approach to the cadence, is exploited for its disturbing properties. Its configuration, with notes crowded low in the piano accompaniment, together with the dissonant appoggiaturas in the voice (arrowed on Example 10.2), contributes to the harsh, grinding effect.

Example 10.2 “Rast,” mm. 20–31

Within each of these passages, the harmony is twice denied resolution before it is accomplished. Delay first sets in with the prolongation of the diminished seventh beyond normal expectations (as indicated on Example 10.2). An escape route is offered by the move to an augmented sixth (marked on the example in m. 23), with potential to trigger the cadential progression towards closure; but the music stalls, forming an interrupted rather than perfect cadence at m. 25. Only after a varied rerun, to a repeat of the last two lines of text, now prolonging the augmented sixth harmony (at mm. 26–29), does it finally resolve in a perfect cadence. In tandem with these proceedings, the vocal line soars beyond the confines of its contours earlier in the song. Schubert adds a tiny, affecting detail to the vocal part in the final version of the passage, inserting an anticipatory note at m. 55, before the upwards resolution of the appoggiatura on the word “regen” (stir).

These tactics lift the music of “Rast” above the level of the quasi-folk style with which Schubert delineated the humble scene in the vocal melody at the start. (That folk-like idiom forms another recurrent feature of the cycle, matching the equivalent element in Müller’s poetry). At the same time, and a measure of Schubert’s mastery, the disruptive surface created here rests on an underlying harmonic logic. Schubert’s dynamics add to the dramatic effect. He marks pianissimo for those uncertain approaches to the cadence, poised in each case on an enigmatic chord. Forte is marked for each of the postponed cadential resolutions, where in verse 2 the storm blows the traveler uncomfortably, even dangerously, along (a sensation he later tells us he welcomes), and where in the painful closing words of the final verse, his heart burns with the serpent that stirs within his breast.

At the opposite end of the spectrum from this drawn-out effect is the sudden stab of pain, as in “Wasserflut” towards the end of verse 1 in the repeated double-verse setting. After climbing precipitately through a tenth (m. 11), the vocal line seems to overshoot its target. What could have been the expected end of the phrase, on the E, is harmonized not with the tonic chord but with a dominant seventh of A minor transformed to a diminished seventh, against which the voice utters an anguished cry (m. 12) on the word “Weh” (woe). The melisma here, tracing the interval of a descending minor third over the sustained dissonant harmony, leaves the music open, responding to the sound of the word, which with its soft ending rather than hard consonant leaves the line of poetry similarly open-ended. (This plangent minor third was predicted at the start of the cycle in the opening three notes of the piano’s RH melody, echoed in the voice, filling in the interval stepwise in what constitutes the recurrent motif marked “y” in Example 10.3.) Schubert’s sensitivity to what Stephen Rodgers has referred to as the “sonic dimension of poetry” is a feature in evidence throughout D911.¹⁰

Example 10.3 “Gute Nacht,” mm. 1–11

In “Wasserflut,” with the ensuing repetition of the text, the vocal line plummets towards closure (mm. 13–14), a gesture that can be seen as reflecting the traveler’s volatile mood. At the end of the second half, the vocal line achieves closure on the e″ but approaches it differently, in a passage marked forte. With these strongly projected passages we can imagine the wanderer shouting into the snow-covered landscape as he conjures up first a vision of the snow melting away (verse 2), and finally his hot tears flowing with the brook past his beloved’s house (verse 4). Throughout the cycle Schubert uses the directional curve of his melodic lines (sometimes, as here, looping round as they climb up or plunge down) to dramatic effect. In “Der greise Kopf,” the piano introduction is launched with a precipitate ascent, followed by an abrupt descent tracing the outline of a diminished seventh, a harmony that resonates through the cycle. It featured as the first dissonant harmony at the opening of “Gute Nacht,” associated with the semitonal fall formed by the first two notes of motif y′ (see Example 10.3, m. 2). That two-note fragment creates the lamenting “sigh” figure noted by Youens; it too threads its way through the songs.

Unexpectedly, in “Der greise Kopf,” the voice takes up the piano’s sweeping opening gesture, peaking a third lower. This unlocks the theatrical character of the music that follows. Its expressive zone, drawing on the language of recitative, matches the drama enacted in the words. The traveler thinks jubilantly that he has grown old suddenly, and is horrified to realize that the white sheen spread by the frost over his hair has melted away. This strange reversal of the wish to stay young, resisting the encroachment of old age, is destabilizing and yet understandable in the context of his longing for death. The build up to the crux at the words “Wie weit noch bis zur Bahre!” (How long still to the grave!) is couched in the ominous chromatic language with which Schubert portrayed elements of plot and character in his early dramatic Lieder.¹¹ More ominous still is the octave/unison texture that follows in piano and voice for that crucial line where the traveler contemplates the grave.

Allied to the intensity felt in both text and music at a single moment is the prevailing sense of obsessiveness and circularity characterizing the protagonist’s pronouncements as he reflects on his condition. Schubert’s setting produces an equivalent to this poetic trope. The devices of ostinato and moto perpetuo, hallowed by centuries of use and finding new life in the nineteenth-century Lied, are exploited to this purpose throughout Winterreise (see Table 10.1 for songs employing the techniques). Schubert draws on them in a myriad of ways. (Examples discussed under the heading of “Topical Genres” below include “Gute Nacht” and “Wasserflut”.)

Besides its psychological implications, circularity serves in Winterreise to reinforce the work’s cyclic status, linking individual songs more than casually within the whole structure. Schubert’s compositional choices enable the music to support this element in the poetry, as well as building a strong overall structure in itself. At its most readily perceptible, this process operates where melodic and rhythmic figures heard at the end of one song are picked up at the beginning of the next. As Bostridge puts it, these connections create “an elective affinity between certain songs (the way the impetuous triplets of “Erstarrung” segue into the rustling triplets of “Der Lindenbaum” … [and] the repetitive … dotted figure of the last verse of “Lindenbaum” is transmuted into the opening of “Wasserflut”).”¹²

Schubert’s Fingerprints

By the time of writing Winterreise, Schubert had the elements of his style well-honed and readily at his disposal. Traces of intertextuality are threaded through in tandem with these Schubertian “fingerprints.” They range from the innermost connections within the cycle through analogies with others of his Lieder; further across his oeuvre to parallels with his instrumental and sacred vocal works; and also, beyond all those, to echoes of other composers. Mozart is in the background to Schubert’s music throughout his oeuvre. Mozartian echoes in Winterreise include the repeated-note patter (on the note D) in “Im Dorfe” at mm. 19–23, with the playful vocal interjections against it, and the bass in parallel with the voice, which sounds like a passage from the Act II finale of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.¹³ The choice of key for a song also sets up associations. By Schubert’s time, the key of “Gute Nacht,” D minor, carried with it an aura of tragedy, horror, and death from its usage in opera and requiem: Mozart again comes to mind.

Antique Style

Contributing to the profundity of Winterreise is Schubert’s frequent turning toward antique models of musical material, a phenomenon rife also in the instrumental music of his last decade. In D911, such references appear in a variety of shapes and contexts: some instances are clearly audible on the surface, while others are embedded more subliminally. Their use contributes to the dual-facing impression that pervades Winterreise. Both Müller and Schubert show allegiance to inherited forms of expression, as well as an experimental modernity. The ancient formulae come loaded with meaning. Most loaded of all is the chromatic fourth, the lament bass familiar from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and widely used in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century instrumental as well as vocal genres. The chromatically filled-in fourth, or fragments of it, threaded through the musical texture in D911 (see Table 10.1 and Example 10.4) is a constant reminder of the protagonist’s incurable sense of loss. In Part II its traditional association with death emerges more strongly.

Example 10.4 “Der Wegweiser,” mm. 65–83

Linked to antique style is the religioso topic present from the start of the cycle with the turn to F major (and its subdominant B♭) in verse 1 of “Gute Nacht.” The hymn-like veneer added to a variant of the trudging motif in the accompaniment there comes to the surface (like much else) towards the end of the cycle. Graham Johnson sees the key of F major, inflected with subdominant color, that Schubert chose for “Das Wirtshaus” as an anomaly, illogically poised between the G minor songs on either side.²⁸ But we could interpret it as a reference to the original manifestation of that topic in “Gute Nacht,” in those same keys (F and B♭). Seen in this light, in “Das Wirtshaus,” they serve simultaneously as a reminder of the hope of lasting love that was lost at the origin of the journey, and a signal of the hope for death that has replaced it.

Commentators have not failed to notice parallels in the poetic text of “Das Wirtshaus” to the Nativity story, and also in that text, as in the winter journey altogether, to the Passion story. Schubert’s music in “Das Wirtshaus” endows the funereal scene, and the protagonist’s response to it, with dignity, reinforcing the idea conveyed in the words of the preceding song, “Der Wegweiser,” of his purity of character. Whatever the protagonist’s theological stance may be, reference to antique models, and hymn-like style, confer a seemingly genuine aura of the sacred on the music of Winterreise. It gains added gravitas when infused with counterpoint. Among Schubert’s references to antique style, and a personal fingerprint shared across the range of genres he cultivated, is the 4–3 suspension, first heard in “Gute Nacht” together with the hymn-like topic at mm. 16–17 (Example 10.1). This ancient contrapuntal formation becomes a pervasive element thereafter.

Schubert’s penchant for canonic technique contributes to the seriousness evoked in particularly portentous passages of the text. The archaic references in “Der Wegweiser” present the most intense example, ranging from the canonic reflections of the funereal opening phrases between voice and piano, threaded through the minor-key A sections (the brief memory of the traveler’s blameless past in the central B section is free of such artifice), to the building of tension in the final measures, with their combination of chromatic fourth (lament figure) and wedge (chromatic contrary motion), as marked on Example 10.4. Both those figures are weighted with a history of fugal counterpoint. Their inexorable move towards collapse, followed by the unmistakable quotation from “Der Tod und das Mädchen” (the dactylic repeated-note figure associated with death), forms one of the most ominous endings in Winterreise.

Epilogue

Schubert’s scene-painting in Winterreise has a vividness fueled by his evident belief in music’s power to bring words to life – a belief shared by Müller. In joining his art to Müller’s, Schubert conjured up the swinging weathervane (sign of the girl’s faithlessness) in “Die Wetterfahne,” the descent to the rocky depths in “Irrlicht,” the shrieking ravens in “Frühlingstraum,” the falling leaves in “Letzte Hoffnung,” the dogs barking in “Im Dorfe,” the hurdy-gurdy playing in “Der Leiermann,” and much else. Beyond this, Schubert’s settings convey his profound feeling for the central character. Because Schubert was deeply moved by the protagonist’s sufferings, his music for Winterreise, working with the poetry, has the power to move us.

Noticeable in Müller’s text is the evidence of the human urge to leave some trace of a person and a life, expressed in the traveler’s memories of carving names in happier times into tree bark, and his wish, as he makes his winter journey, to etch them on the icy surface of the water. Schubert, writing his name as a composer on the surface of the poetry, allows us access to the depths that lie beneath.

Organicism, Form, and the Fallacy of Necessity in the Artwork

In The Romantic Generation, Charles Rosen argues that even though each song in Winterreise might stand independently as a coherent, sufficient whole, it partly loses its “character and significance” and makes “imperfect sense” when considered in isolation.⁵ This amounts to admitting indirectly that the cycle exerts a binding force on its components and forms a greater whole, despite the apparent looseness of the relationships among the songs.⁶ The global light projected by this overarching whole – its “resonance” – is created not from the mere addition but rather from the combination, or admixture, of the different shades and qualities of the lights emitted by the various parts; each part interacts with its neighbors and contributes to the overall effect. The cycle provides a context for understanding the “sense” of every individual song as well as modifies our perception of it, as though some chemical reaction resulted from the song’s placement among the collection, a reaction that affected its substance.

A long-standing presupposition in music criticism is that, in order to deserve praise or attention, a musical work has to be “organic” – so tightly organized that no limb might be added to or removed from the work’s body without causing it irretrievable damage. Deemed especially meritorious are works where almost every part or element demonstrably originates from a single primary cell that germinates and reproduces itself throughout, permeating every subdivision of the whole either overtly or covertly. The chagrin experienced by music analysts in relation to Winterreise stems from their wish to view it as more than a mere aggregate of songs despite the difficulty of establishing such organicism at the level of the cycle. Analysts depend on the assumption of coherence. As in every academic field of inquiry, they set out to uncover patterns where there seems to be only lesser or greater randomness; they seek manifestations of sameness, recurrences of a given feature or phenomenon, usually a melodic contour or harmonic progression. Such an approach is entirely legitimate assuming that a pertinent choice is made of what features to track – a choice that is crucial and can become delicate when the obvious categories refuse to yield the expected results.

This approach appears less exclusive, though, when we take into account the artistic nature of music, whereby the exceptional, the unexpected, that which falls outside any pattern, is at least as significant as similarity or repetition. No valid piece of music could exist without an element of unpredictability, even surprise. Works of art are unique occurrences, and to reduce them to a set of common, replicating features (within a single work a well as from one work to another) is also to ignore what precisely makes them unique. Moreover, concentrating on sameness and repetition risks blinding us to contrast, opposition, diversity, and complementarity, which are as essential to artistic elaboration as repetition. A sense of completeness may be derived from complementarity, or the exhaustion of a certain number of discrete possibilities within a limited array (in modulation, for instance), which strict adherence to a monochromatic type of consistency may be unable to provide. When asking what in music makes something – a piece or a sequence of pieces – a “whole,” we thus have alternative ways of answering, although the analytical tools at our disposal are far more suited to highlighting unity than diversity.

Another objection lies in what may be called the “fallacy of necessity” in the artwork. Notions such as organicism, as often understood, tend to make us see works as perfect and therefore inalterable, and the creative process as unerring, as though governed by certainty and inevitability. Every part, every development, purportedly proceeds from that inner necessity manifested through internal coherence, which analysis seeks to reveal. Analytical theories such as Heinrich Schenker’s reinforce this belief by positing an underlying framework that obeys its own genetic program, so to speak, and placing a moral blemish on any type of music embodying a less rigorous conception of unity. The general analytical vocabulary, perhaps under the modernist influence, has for decades been replete with such terms as “functional” and “structural.” Yet artworks, including pieces of music, are neither objects found in nature nor entities designed supernaturally and merely transmitted through their author or composer. How we approach these works should therefore be free of the pseudo-scientificity mixed with superstition that can be detected in some attitudes to analysis. Art is largely arbitrary, and to acknowledge this is a necessary step. Works are shaped a certain way: but every juncture in them reveals a choice that could have been made differently. The result of such a series of choices is contingent rather than predictable. Once a work has been delivered into the world, though, its seeming permanence creates the illusion that it has always been there, and could not have been otherwise than it is.

If the composer is not a passive medium through which some impersonal “will of the tone” expresses itself, but rather a creator who wills every detail of the work, we as receivers are likewise not passive receptacles into which that expression is poured. Coherence and relations are things that we establish each time we “activate” a work of art, that is, look at it with some intention of interpreting it, thereby turning reception into an act. Some of these relations depend on clues unambiguously laid out by the composer, but others are dependent on elements that we distinguish and elect as clues. If any “sense” is to be made, it is always of our making. If beauty, as commonly said, is in the eye of the beholder, coherence is in the ear and mind of the listener.

Journeying Through Keys

Such considerations have a bearing on how we identify coherence in Winterreise. Within the Classical style, principles of distribution, symmetry, convention, and topicality assisted composers in framing their works. However, by the early nineteenth century, these principles had weakened. With Winterreise, a first analytical challenge arises from the fact that while Schubert did not alter the order of the initial twelve songs to accommodate his setting of Müller’s additional twelve poems, he nevertheless transposed some of these songs (most notably No. 12, “Einsamkeit,” no longer in the opening D minor of “Gute Nacht”) and demoted what was once a complete cycle to the status of a half cycle.⁷ While Schubert himself certainly intended the transpositions in the first part of Winterreise,⁸ the publisher Haslinger may well have proposed those in the second part or even, as Richard Kramer suggests,⁹ decided upon them. (However, these transpositions are sufficiently coherent for Schubert’s assent not to be ruled out.) Even if we accept this hypothesis, Schubert’s modifications question that inner necessity commonly linked with organicism, and which we associate with masterpieces.

To address these issues, Table 11.1 shows the keys of the cycle distributed among four columns representing harmonic “quadrants,” or subdivisions of the circle of fifths. For the transposed songs, the original key appears in parentheses with an arrow pointing towards the transposed key. In the second row of the table, the tonic key (F, D, B, A♭, respectively) of the harmonic quadrant appears at the center of each column, flanked by its subdominant (B♭, G, E, D♭) and dominant (C, A, F♯, E♭) keys. Each quadrant is named after its tonic key, as shown in the top row of the table. Keys within each quadrant can be either minor or major in accordance with the modal interchangeability so often encountered in Schubert’s music. The choice of D as tonic in column I is justified by it being the key of the first and last songs of the earlier, twelve-song cycle, while yielding the most balanced distribution of keys for the whole of Winterreise with respect to the first quadrant in terms of harmonic function, and also between both adjacent quadrants.¹⁰

In Figure 11.1, which recalls Ernő Lendvai’s axis system,¹¹ the twelve (major or minor) keys in the second row of Table 11.1 are displayed more traditionally in a circle. Passage from one quadrant to the next is made possible by equating the subdominant key of a given quadrant with the supertonic, or the “dominant of the dominant” (^DD), of its counterclockwise successor. Figure 11.1 also permits us to measure the distance of the various song keys from the initial D in fifths.

Figure 11.1 The circle of fifths and the tonal quadrants

Table 11.1 shows that, while most songs in the cycle belong to the first quadrant (I), a significant number belong to the adjacent quadrants (II) and (III). Precise numbers are inessential here; what matters is the overall balance inherent to Schubert’s choice of keys. In the final version of Winterreise, the number of songs in the first quadrant equals that of the second and third quadrants combined, and the number of songs in the third quadrant approximates that in the second quadrant. Traveling leftwards, or in the flat direction, from the first quadrant towards the second quadrant, is usually perceived as a darkening of tone color, while traveling rightwards, or in the sharp direction, towards the third quadrant, creates a sense of tonal brightening. More generally, keys are perceived differently according to how they relate to each other. What one observes in Winterreise is Schubert’s attempt to establish a tonal core, on both sides of which are disposed songs in complementary, contrasting keys. The tonal “journey” thus essentially explores three quadrants out of four. The more remote fourth quadrant (situated opposite the first quadrant in Figure 11.1) is visited only twice – both times in the second half of the cycle, this moment being delayed until a certain degree of harmonic richness has been reached. Schubert’s reason for visiting the fourth quadrant at this point may have been to add further contrast before reaffirming the centrality of the first quadrant.

Schubert’s transposition of songs considerably modifies the tonal balance of the first part of Winterreise by increasing its harmonic diversity. These changes were no doubt motivated by the introduction of the twelve new songs of the second part, as Schubert must have felt that the resulting collection would otherwise have been too uniform. Indeed, the expanded proportions of the cycle called for a wider harmonic scope, itself yielding a broader expressive range.

Already in his original conception, Schubert paralleled the move from D minor in “Gute Nacht” (No. 1) a fifth upwards to A, its minor dominant, in “Die Wetterfahne” (No. 2), in the first quadrant, with the similar move from F minor in “Gefror’ne Tränen” (No. 3) to C minor in “Erstarrung” (No. 4) in the second quadrant. He then shifted to the highly contrasting E major of “Der Lindenbaum” (No. 5) in the third quadrant. Moving from A minor to F minor implies one chromatic transformation, that of A into A♭, appended to the plain, diatonic succession from A minor to F major, with the common note C held throughout. The progression thus follows this simple underlying pattern:

$\begin{array}{c}{A}^{–}\\ \downarrow \\ F^{+}\to F^{–}\end{array}$

F and C are the relative major of D minor and the dominant of the relative, respectively (thus harmonically close to D), yet which have been rendered minor in order to fit the mood of the poems. While all the keys up through No. 4 have been minor ones, a more somber shade is introduced with “Gefror’ne Tränen” and “Erstarrung,” so that even within the overall category of the minor, nuances and opposition obtain. Conversely, E – the subdominant of B minor, the relative of D major – should itself have been a minor key; instead, Schubert chose to accentuate the harmonic contrast provided by the move to the third quadrant by making the key major, again in accordance with the poem. The progression from C minor to E major offers two chromatic transformations (E♭ to E and G to G♯) and no common notes. It can be decomposed as follows:

$\begin{array}{c}{C}^{–}\to C^{+}\\ \downarrow \\ E^{+}\leftarrow E^{–}\end{array}$

Despite the modal changes, it is worth noting that both lines of development so far – one towards the second quadrant, the other towards the third, whose tonic keys are F and B respectively – derive from the first song’s hesitation, in mm. 70–71, between D minor (whose relative is F major) and D major (whose relative is B minor). Rather than superficial and theoretical, the relations between the song keys are poetic in nature and rooted in the very dialectic of Winterreise displayed at the outset.

The relationship of E major to F♯ minor between “Der Lindenbaum” (No. 5) and “Wasserflut” (No. 6) in the original version of the cycle is straightforward: V to vi in a major key. The position of “Wasserflut” inside the third quadrant is not affected by the transposition to E minor, even though the change has an impact on the song’s sonority and distance from D (F♯ minor being on the further border of the quadrant). The motivation for this transposition remains unclear, apart from simplifying the transition to the next song, “Auf dem Flusse” (No. 7), by staying in the same key instead of descending a whole tone from F♯ minor to E minor – a rather abrupt, unusual succession. Song Nos. 5, 6, and 7 therefore help to establish a tonal pole around the key of E within the first half of the cycle. Yet “Auf dem Flusse” is a very rich song, above all harmonically; after temporarily re-establishing the E major of “Der Lindenbaum” in its course, for the first time in the cycle it ventures into the fourth quadrant by modulating to G♯ minor before regressing into the first quadrant with G minor. This modulation prepares for the shift to G minor with “Rückblick” (No. 8). E minor to G minor is another chromatic third progression; G, the relative major of E minor, is itself made minor, thus standing in a similar relation to it as F minor to D minor previously. “Irrlicht” (No. 9) at last establishes B minor, the relative of D major, thus returning to the third quadrant. The progression from G minor to B minor transposes and reverses that from A minor to F minor discussed above.

In the original twelve-song version of Winterreise, the last three songs returned to the first quadrant and remained there with the tonic–dominant–tonic succession of D minor in “Rast” (No. 10), A major-minor in “Frühlingstraum” (No. 11), and finally D minor in “Einsamkeit” (No. 12). The cycle thus closed in the same key in which it began by reversing the initial progression. But the transposition of “Rast” to C minor and “Einsamkeit” to B minor, in the second and third quadrants, respectively, testify to Schubert’s intention, with the composition of his Fortsetzung, of broadening the tonal scope of the first half and avoiding cadential resolution into the initial key, or even the initial quadrant; the transpositions invite a continuation. Whereas the original version of the cycle was strongly centered around the first quadrant, the second version offers a richer and more balanced sequence of keys. The transposition of “Rast” to C minor, for example, was evidently motivated by the need to compensate for the predominance of keys in the third quadrant.

The relation of B minor to C minor between “Irrlicht” and “Rast” is the most distant of the whole cycle. It can be understood as the mediant to the minor subdominant of a major key (or “schlichter Halbtonschritt” in Riemann’s nomenclature)¹² and, here again, implies a mode transformation from an expected major key to a minor one. Given our habituation to the tonal system, such alterations affect our perception of the transition from one song to the next. The succession is rendered more intense by the semitone step between the two keys – a dissonance, instead of a consonant third or fifth. Schubert thus not only varies the transitions between the songs, but also intensifies them. Whereas the succession from B minor to D minor would have transposed that from “Auf dem Flusse” to “Rückblick” (E minor to G minor), the succession from B minor to C minor introduces an element of mystery and tension. Music does not merely reflect the drama of the words: it also projects its own drama onto them. Here the progression not only accords with the first lines of “Rast” (“I only notice now how tired I am / As I lie down to rest”) but also sets them in striking relief. The ensuing path from C minor to A major between “Rast” and “Frühlingstraum” is reminiscent of that from C minor to E major above. Likewise implying two chromatic, modal transformations and including no common note, it can be broken down as follows:

$\begin{array}{c}{C}^{–} \to C^{+}\\ \downarrow \\ A^{+} \leftarrow A^{–}\end{array}$

Finally, the succession from A minor to B minor, from the end of “Frühlingstraum” to the beginning of “Einsamkeit,” shows another, less stringent, stepwise progression, this time by a whole tone, aptly ending the first half of Winterreise by evading the set of progressions so far established. Thus, as this discussion of Part I of the cycle reveals, not only does the choice of keys demonstrate variety, complementarity, and unexpectedness, but so also does the choice of progression from one song to another.

Associative Relations

Contributing to the overall perception of Winterreise as a cycle is a web of associative – rather than transitive – relations. Far more than actual motives, these relations involve texture, timbre, register, articulation, or even general dimensions such as tempo, key, and meter that have a direct impact on perception – hence the greater difficulty in bringing them to light. Their number is potentially unlimited. As with every piece of music, Winterreise is a finished sequence that can be interpreted in a multitude of ways. Each hearing generates associations in the mind in the form of analogies, resemblances, and correspondences that impress themselves on us and seem to bear greater or lesser significance.

A number of writers, notably Feil and Youens, have pointed out that the in gehender Bewegung tempo of “Gute Nacht” (Example 11.1a) establishes a pattern for other “walking” songs in the cycle, such as Nos. 3, 7, 10, and 12 (Example 11.1b). Likewise, the rushing wind of “Die Wetterfahne” (Example 11.1c) is perceptible in other fast, even chase-like songs, as, for instance, Nos. 4, 8, and 18 (Example 11.1d). Winterreise is especially remarkable for its slow songs, in which all movement seems arrested in order to give way to some fantastic, vision-like character, as in “Wasserflut” (Example 11.1e). Slow songs may follow each other to create a profound feeling of standstill, as with Nos. 6 and 7, or form a group, as with Nos. 14, 15, and 17. Finally, a last category might embrace “lulling” songs in 6/8 time, such as “Frühlingstraum” (Example 11.1f). These characterizations may be disputable, and some songs that are not unified with regard to tempo or time signature may relate to several categories. Interestingly, these categories do not quite tally with the placement of songs in the harmonic quadrants, thus contributing to the cycle’s rich yet unsystematic set of relationships.

Example 11.1 (a) “Walking” rhythm and F–E motif in “Gute Nacht,” mm. 1–3; (b) “walking” rhythm in “Einsamkeit,” mm. 1–3; (c) “rushing wind” and F–E motif in “Die Wetterfahne,” mm. 1–4; (d) “rushing wind” in “Rückblick,” mm. 1–2; (e) slow, arrested rhythm in “Wasserflut,” mm. 1–2; (f) “lulling” rhythm in “Frühlingstraum,” mm. 1–2

Remarkably, the main recurring motif in Winterreise consists of a mere minimal figure, namely the minor ♭6^{^}–5^{^} descending semitone, which is also echoed across the cycle by other semitonal relationships, notably ♭3^{^}–2^{^}, or sometimes 8^{^}–♮7^{^}. Thus the F–E semitone of “Die Wetterfahne” (mm. 1–2) (Example 11.1c) is anticipated in “Gute Nacht” (mm. 1–2) (Example 11.1a), and the C–B semitone in “Der Lindenbaum” (m. 26) (Example 11.2a) finds its final resonance in “Der Leiermann” (m. 4) (Example 11.2b).²⁰ The motif is particularly pervasive in such songs as “Rast” and “Letzte Hoffnung,” although, because it is so elemental, it can be traced almost everywhere in the cycle, especially in relation to the minor mode or the diminished seventh chord. While this motif is not unique to Schubert, it does carry particular meaning in his work as being the semitone that, in the piano part, marks the dramatic climax of “Gretchen am Spinnrade” (D118), where the music temporarily halts. A similar heart-rending effect can be heard in “Wasserflut” (m. 12) (Example 11.2c). In “Gute Nacht,” the F–E oscillation is harmonized by a singular I–II⁴₂–I succession (mm. 8–10) (Example 11.2d), which is later replicated in “Einsamkeit” (mm. 9–10), but it also bears a kinship with the striking II^{♯ $\begin{array}{c}6\\ 5\end{array}$} –I⁶ progression of “Die Wetterfahne” (mm. 31–32) (Example 11.2e) – a passage highlighted by Ernst Kurth.²¹ Equally related is the seeming I–V–IV–I regression in “Irrlicht” (mm. 1–2, 5–6) (Example 11.2f, g), though it is never actually articulated as such by Schubert.

Example 11.2 (a) C–B motif in “Der Lindenbaum,” m. 26; (b) and in “Der Leiermann,” m. 4; (c) E–F sorrowful climax in “Wasserflut,” m. 12; (d) F–E motif and I–II⁴₂–I progression in “Gute Nacht,” mm. 8–10; (e) II^{♯ $\begin{array}{c}6\\ 5\end{array}$} –I⁶ progression in “Die Wetterfahne,” mm. 31–32; (f) apparent I–V–IV–I regression in “Irrlicht,” mm. 1–2; (g) and in mm. 5–6

Other resemblances arise from manifestations of tone painting: tramping steps, bursts of wind, posthorn calls, tears seized by frost, a horse galloping, cocks crowing, wings fluttering, leaves falling, etc. Even the horns of “Der Lindenbaum” partake of a related form of evocation that transforms absence and the abstraction of remembrance into poetic presence and fullness. Despite the permanence of the principle, only a few of these figures recur in more than one song, and always in a different, metamorphosed shape.

Recitative passages and dissonant melodic intervals both occur in “Die Wetterfahne” (mm. 11–13, 15–17) (Example 11.3a, b). Unison textures between piano and voice are found repeatedly, as again exemplified in “Die Wetterfahne” (mm. 6–9) (Example 11.3c), as if to signify a renunciation of accompanying that parallels the periodic repudiation of singing. In contrast, a quasi-religious, chorale-like texture appears in places, as in “Im Dorfe” (mm. 37–39) (Example 11.3d). Noticeable, too, are sudden harmonic changes that alter the prevalent color dramatically (“Auf dem Flusse,” mm. 8–9) (Example 11.3e) or move towards greater lightness (“Der greise Kopf,” mm. 10–12) (Example 11.3f). Vocal outbursts in the top register punctuate a number of songs, e.g. “Gefror’ne Tränen,” mm. 47–49 (Example 11.3g). Schubert frequently opposes the voice’s lower and upper range, often favoring high, tense notes. While the diction is primarily syllabic, occasional, rapid melismas can express anger or anguish (“Die Wetterfahne,” m. 18) (Example 11.3h).

Example 11.3 (a) Recitative passage in “Die Wetterfahne,” mm. 11–13; (b) dissonant intervals, mm. 15–17; (c) unisons between piano and voice, mm. 6–9; (d) chorale-like texture in “Im Dorfe,” mm. 37–39; (e) distant, rapid harmonic changes in “Auf dem Flusse,” mm. 8–9; (f) and in “Der greise Kopf,” mm. 10–12; (g) vocal outburst in the higher register in “Gefror’ne Tränen,” mm. 47–49; (h) rapid melisma in “Die Wetterfahne,” mm. 17–18

Also returning intermittently are martial-sounding dotted rhythms or other inexorable rhythms in the piano part (“Wasserflut,” mm. 5–7, 9–11) (Example 11.4a), embodying both the protagonist’s surges of resoluteness and the implacability of his situation. Rising 5^{^}–8^{^} motions in the voice or piano reinforce this implacability as well as allude to some strenuous surpassing of the self (“Wasserflut,” mm. 11, 13, 27) (Example 11.4b, c). At times, the piano part, in repeated notes, swells to such an extent that it almost swamps the voice, as though the traveler were overcome by his condition (“Einsamkeit,” mm. 28–30) (Example 11.4d). Finally, it is worth noting how the modulation from the key of ♭II (over a dominant pedal) back to the dominant of the main key in “Gefror’ne Tränen” (mm. 34–38) (Example 11.4e) comes back almost literally in “Einsamkeit” (mm. 30–34) (Example 11.4f),²² and how more subtle echoes of “Frühlingstraum” can be heard in “Täuschung.”

Example 11.4 (a) Dotted rhythms in “Wasserflut,” mm. 5–7; (b) 5^‸–8^‸ motion, mm. 11–12; (c) and in mm. 13–14; (d) piano accompaniment overpowering the voice in “Einsamkeit,” mm. 28–30; (e) modulation to ♭II over a dominant pedal point and return to V of the main key in “Gefror’ne Tränen,” mm. 34–38; (f) and in “Einsamkeit,” mm. 30–34

Major–minor exchange is a feature common to many songs in Winterreise, starting with “Gute Nacht.”²³ More generally, the cycle is characterized by a refusal to let music “flower” in the sense, described by Goethe in his 1790 Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären, of progressive elevation, differentiation, and refinement; most songs shun any real development or growth, so that very few, for instance, can be exploited individually in a recital program. Some, such as “Frühlingstraum,” even display a pattern of retrogressive growth, shifting from a richer, more melodic texture to a barer, more declamatory one, from major to minor, and from warmth to cold.

Ultimately, our expectations about connectedness between the songs and the way we conceive connections are dependent on our understanding of the cycle. If, according to Novalis, nature is but a construction of the mind, or, in Schelling’s words, “a poem lying pent in a mysterious and wonderful script … a world existing, not outside” the artist “but within,”²⁴ then we should reconsider the relation of reality to illusion in Winterreise, if only because illusions are the very stuff of reality in Romantic poetry, while reality is degraded to a mere illusion. But there is nothing “realistic” in the cycle, and what is more, no “reality.” Hence, there is no actual winter, no snow, no crows, no dogs, no unlucky love, and also no death (at least in a physical sense). Above all, no narrative is to be sought. Everythingis to be taken, as Novalis writes, “allegorically.” In that respect, if flowers – especially blue ones – that were so essential to Die schöne Müllerin are the attribute of the poet and representative of poetry, their disappearance in Winterreise takes on a significance that involves the disappearance of poetry itself, or of the possibility of it. What this winter of poetry meant for Schubert cannot be surmised from any literal reading of the cycle. The apparent disconnectedness of the latter is at once a manifestation of, and a pointer to that symbolic riddle.

Müller’s Poetry

The Tonal Design of Schubert’s Cycle

Schubert faced the challenge of setting Müller’s poems in a way that incorporated both the poetic discontinuity and, where possible, any interconnections among the poems. He created musical disruptions through several musical means: a chaotic tonal design and the use of unpredictable rhythms, meters, and tempi.²²

Large tonal works, including multi-movement pieces and cycles, tend to have an underlying tonal design that provides a point of reference (a governing tonic) and clear tonal closure (a strong Perfect Authentic Cadence, or PAC). The large-scale musical space is thus created through a tonal frame that ensures continuity and coherence. In Winterreise, however, the tonal design imparts neither a sense of continuity (i.e., of moving within a comprehensible space) nor of coherence (beginning and ending in the same tonal space). Instead, Schubert conveys the cycle’s poetic discontinuity through a seemingly disorganized choice of keys and, with a few exceptions, a general lack of interrelationships among keys. An additional issue involving the cycle’s tonal design is that the keys of five songs (nos. 6, 10, 12, 22, and 24) were changed prior to publication. Table 12.1 shows the keys Schubert used in his first version as well as the publication keys. The original keys of songs 10 and 12 provided coherence in that Part I of the cycle ended in D minor, the same key in which it began. Meanwhile, song 6, in F♯ minor rather than the later key of E minor, broke up a three-song grouping in E major/minor. In Part II, the key changes are toward the end, songs 22 in A minor and 24 in B minor.²³

For most of the cycle, the keys shift back and forth between sharp and flat keys, creating constant tonal disruptions, especially, as will be shown, with more remotely related keys. Table 12.1 highlights this shifting. Given the grim poetic narrative, it is not surprising that minor keys appear far more frequently than major ones. Also, while closely related major-mode songs occur over time in E major (song 5), A major (songs 11, 19, and 23), and D major (song 17), they are too dispersed over the cycle to create any tonal closeness or continuity.

Schubert’s tonal choices are, of course, deeply related to the poetic text. For example, song 1 is in D minor/major, and song 2 is in a close relation, A minor/major. Both songs involve the wanderer standing outside the house of his lost love. Song 3, “Gefror’ne Tränen,” however, where he acutely feels the pain of rejection and alienation, is farther removed: F minor and its relative, A♭ major, are a distinctly different tonal world. Similar disconnections occur between songs 10 and 11. In song 10, “Rast,” the wanderer deals with his ambivalence of finding rest vs. moving on in C minor. Then song 11, “Frühlingstraum,” where the wanderer seeks solace in dreams of love and spring only to awaken to the cold, dark reality, occurs in A major/minor. The two songs are thus tonally disconnected.

Schubert does allow some songs to group together within recurring, closely related keys, and there is one such group in each part of the cycle. In Part I, songs 5–7 are in E major or minor. All intensify the wanderer’s pain and despair and thus form a poetic unit within the journey: song 5, “Der Lindenbaum,” with the first lure toward death; song 6, “Wasserflut,” where he weeps and recalls the girl’s house once more; and song 7, “Auf dem Flusse,” where he carves the ending date of their love. The same intensification occurs at the opening of Part II, where songs 13–16 are in the relative pair, C minor and E♭ major. By keeping to the relative major/minor pair, Schubert groups these songs together tonally as the poems and songs proceed from his last temptation to think of his lost love (song 13) to his increased yearning for death (songs 14 and 15) to finally his abandonment of hope (song 16).²⁴

However, these groups occur within larger disconnections. Songs 5–7 in E major/minor are flanked by song 4 (C minor) and song 8 (G minor). Thus C minor (three flats) goes to E major (four sharps), and E minor (one sharp) goes to G minor (two flats): C minor–E major/minor–G minor. In a similar way, songs 13–16, in E♭ major/C minor, occur between B minor (song 12) and D major (song 17): B minor (two sharps) goes to E♭ major/C minor (three flats), which goes to D major (two sharps): B minor–E♭ major/C minor–D major. A similar disconnection occurs with songs 19–23: both songs 19 and 23 are in the sharp key of A major. But in between these songs are the flat keys of G minor and F major: A major–G minor–F major–G minor–A major. The A major songs depict the wanderer’s retreat to fantasy, while the G minor and F major songs convey the reality of the wanderer’s ongoing struggle.

One final issue involving discontinuity in the tonal design is Schubert’s well-known use of parallel major/minor and relative major/minor pairs. In a sea of tonal discontinuity, the use of closely connected major/minor pairs enables contrasting issues within a poem to be easily distinguished without a more dramatic change in tonal center. Table 12.1 shows Schubert’s use of these modal shifts. For one third of the cycle, a prevailing minor mode shifts to major, where the major mode depicts escape through dream, memory, or illusion. A few songs involve the relative pair: in Part I, songs 3, 9, and 10, and in Part II, songs 15, 22, and 23. The most dramatic use of the relative pair is in song 3, “Gefror’ne Tränen,” which vacillates between the keys of F minor and A♭ major to dramatize the wanderer’s conflicts. The vacillation between two closely related keys creates tonal ambiguity, which in turn illustrates the wanderer’s emotional distress.

Temporality in Schubert’s Cycle

Triplets

Schubert also employs other temporal devices to depict the poetic verse. He uses triplet rhythms for this purpose in songs 4, 5, 6, 9, 14, and 15. Sometimes triplets are pervasive, such as in song 4, “Erstarrung” (Ziemlich schnell), where the wanderer’s frenzy to find keepsakes of his lost love is expressed through rhythmic agitation. Triplets also occur as part of a more complex use of rhythm, such as in song 14, “Der greise Kopf,” a meditation on yearning for death, as illustrated in Example 12.1. The piano introduction in mm. 1–4 comprises two 2-measure units, and the second of these units recurs in the interludes in mm. 9–10, 15–16, 34–35, and the postlude in mm. 43–44. The piano’s recurring solo gesture is dramatic: a crying out in a relatively high register that immediately descends more than an octave with an arpeggio in triplet eighth notes. The rests that follow these outbursts separate the poignant piano gestures (depicting the wanderer’s anxiety) from the words that follow as he dwells on his desire for death.

Example 12.1 “Der greise Kopf”: Triplets

Silence (Rests)

Recurring rests can have diverse effects in music. In Winterreise, the use of rests for expressive effects is exemplified in the much-explored song 7, “Auf dem Flusse,” where the constant eighth-note rests portray a hesitation or tentative feeling.²⁹ The constant use of eighth-note rests in the piano in mm. 1–12 depicts the wanderer questioning the river, from which he feels estranged, with short vocal phrases using dotted rhythms. In mm. 13 and 22, the rests cease for one measure, to be replaced by continuous sixteenth notes that accelerate the song’s motion. When the poem shifts to focus on the river’s frozen crust in m. 14, the initial rest usage resumes. After the sixteenths in m. 22, Schubert shifts to the parallel key of E major, as the accompaniment adopts a new rhythmic profile (mm. 23–39): in the LH, one beat of eighth note and eighth rest followed by another beat of four sixteenth notes. This conveys the dramatic tension of what Youens calls “the attempt to carve a makeshift tombstone for the love.”³⁰ The pain of this carving is depicted by combining two previously separated rhythms that illustrate the dichotomy of moving on vs. pausing: the sixteenth notes suggest accelerated motion showing the wanderer’s increasing tension, while the eighth rests undermine that motion, suggesting he is in too much pain to move ahead. In the next stanza, the wanderer questions whether his frozen heart, like the frozen river, internalizes a “raging torrent” of pain. Schubert portrays this climactic moment in two ways. First, he combines the two rhythmic elements: the piano’s eighth rests and the dotted rhythms from the opening vocal line in the accompaniment to express the accumulation of anxieties from the song’s opening. Second, he gives the vocal line a recitative-like style, with many rests fracturing the line into two-measure units, almost as if the wanderer’s pain causes a breathless weariness.

The constant use of rests in song 8, “Rückblick,” meanwhile, expresses agitation rather than trepidation as the wanderer pushes forward against the temptation to turn back to his lost love. Indeed, throughout the cycle, songs 2, 7, 10, 11, 13, 17, and 20 use rests in either voice or piano to create various effects.³¹

As noted, in song 7, “Auf dem Flusse,” Schubert also uses rests in both performers’ parts to create formal disjunctions: separations between sung verses and piano solos. These rests in all parts disrupt the musical flow throughout one half of the cycle: songs 5, 7, 9, 11–14, 16–18, 20, and 23. Song 5, “Der Lindenbaum,” has two such formal divisions: in m. 44, at the end of stanza 4 (“Here you’ll find peace [death]!”) and in m. 58, at the end of stanza 5 (“The cold winds blew / Right into my face; / … I didn’t turn around”). Eighth rests with fermatas stop motion before each of the last two stanzas as the wanderer reacts to the call of death in stanza 4 and the fury of winter winds in stanza 5.

Several songs use rests for both formal interruptions and expressive effects. In song 11, “Frühlingstraum,” piano solos (introduction and interludes) and the poem’s six stanzas are all separated by eighth-note rests in both voice and accompaniment. These pauses underscore the dramatic changes in the text. After the hopeful dream of spring in mm. 5–14 (downbeat), the eighth rests at the end of m. 14 in both vocal line and accompaniment occur with fermatas as the wanderer is brutally awakened. Similarly abrupt shifts between dream or illusions (e.g., painted windows) and reality recur in mm. 26, 58, and 70. In addition to the formal separations in “Frühlingstraum,” Schubert uses rests in the accompaniment to portray the text in other ways. After offbeat rests in mm. 5–13, the eighth rests in mm. 15–21, a passage marked Schnell (fast) and mf, portray this devastating awakening (see Example 12.2).

Example 12.2 “Frühlingstraum”: Disruptive rests in piano accompaniment

In Part I of the cycle, the discontinuity produced by silence is extremely suggestive of the wanderer’s struggles with his pain, anger, and alienation, and in Part II, of his obsession with death and psychological disintegration. His increasing despair leads to a diminishing sense of reality throughout, but especially in songs 19 and 23. Note that seven songs creating tensions through the use of rests occur in Part II, where the wanderer becomes both obsessive and unhinged.

Accents on Beat 2

Another way that Schubert destabilizes rhythm and meter is to accent beat 2 rather than the downbeat, especially through agogic accents (accents on normally weak beats due to longer duration).³² This technique, occuring in songs 5, 6, 10, 14–16, 19, and 22–24, creates metric ambiguity and a general unsteadiness as the ear searches for the “real” downbeat. In addition, three songs (2, 5, and 23) end on beat 2 rather than a downbeat, and song 18 ends on beat 3 of a 4/4 meter. These accents weaken the songs’ endings, as will be discussed below.

Song 6, “Wasserflut” (Langsam), elegantly exemplifies the use of both triplets and accents on beat 2. In the piano introduction, an ascending sweep of triplet eighths on the downbeat suggests motion that is immediately undermined by the longer dotted quarters that emphasize beat 2. This vividly depicts the wanderer’s struggling with his unremitting tears. The mix of triplets and agogic emphasis on beat 2 is unsettling, as it is possible to hear the arpeggio as an upbeat to a downbeat on the longer dotted quarter. Example 12.3 shows (a) the beat 2 accent in m. 1 as notated, and (b) a re-barring of m. 1 showing the triplets as an upbeat followed by the accented dotted quarter as a downbeat. Beat 2 emphasis continues in many measures of the vocal strophe as well as the recurring piano solos: mm. 1–2, 15–16, and 29–30.

Example 12.3 “Wasserflut”: Agogic accent on beat 2

The Ending of Winterreise

The premise of disruption and incoherence in Winterreise is especially powerful because we do not know how the cycle ends: when and where – or whether – our wanderer arrives at a destination. Numerous scholars have acknowledged this elusive ending, and two different interpretations have emerged. First, many believe that the wanderer achieves his long-desired escape through death – a desire that begins in song 5 and becomes an obsession in Part II of the cycle. This drive towards death culminates in song 20, “Der Wegweiser,” where he chooses the “road from which no one ever returned.” For many scholars, this intense yearning for death seems convincing, despite the “denial” of death in song 21, “Das Wirtshaus.”³⁸ In Death in Winterreise, Suurpää discusses the issue of death in detail, proposing that the wanderer seeks death not of his physical self but rather of his emotional self.³⁹

A second interpretation of the wanderer’s fate is that he joins the hurdy-gurdy man in madness. Richard Capell adopts this view, noting, “The final songs of the ‘Winterreise’ are indicative of the overwrought mind’s derangement … The madman meets a beggar, links with him his fortune; and the two disappear into the snowy landscape.”⁴⁰ John Reed agrees that “[the wanderer] is denied the consolation of death … . his fate is a life in death, relieved only by the comradeship of the pathetic hurdy-gurdy man.”⁴¹ As Youens indicates, this notion of madness is supported in several earlier songs: song 9, “Irrlicht,” where the wanderer’s “depths of depression” lead to distraction with the illusory “will-o’-the-wisp”; song 16, “Letzte Hoffnung,” which is a “psychologically accurate portrayal of … a state of panic and obsession … barely this side of a psychotic break”; and song 19, “Täuschung,” where “[t]he ‘death’ that threatens the wanderer is the dissolution of his sanity under the burden of despair.”⁴² Finally, song 23, “Die Nebensonnen,” highlights the wanderer’s mental frailty as he mourns his loss through a hallucination of multiple suns.

Both proposed “endings” of Winterreise are viable, even if clouded in uncertainty. My interpretation, which also involves uncertainty, derives from the German Romantic fragment, with its incompletion and irresolution. The lack of closure for the cycle is consistent with the nature of the poetry: the wanderer stumbles about, overwhelmed by despair and confusion, and his journey continues into the indefinite future, his struggles unresolved. Neither escape through death nor succumbing to madness resolves the ache of his heartbreak and his psychological torment; maybe resolution will come in the future, but we will only know this in our imaginations.