Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel

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Note image
Print of the scene by Goethe

Gretchen am Spinnrade is an art song by Franz Schubert from 1814. It is based on a scene from the tragedy Faust I by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . Schubert published it in 1821 as Op. 2 ( D 118). Gretchen am Spinnrade is one of his first successful songs , along with the setting of the Erlkönig ballad .

description

This song is written in rondo form (ABACADA ').

Gretchen sings while she is spinning and thinks of Faust, whom she previously met briefly on the street (which was the first reaction that triggered her monologue with the song It was a king in Thule ). After a long conversation in the garden with Faust and later a kiss in the garden shed, she is completely thrown off track by the onslaught of emotions. In this situation she sings the song that alone forms her monologue in her room while she is spinning. In the following scene, she meets Faust again and asks the famous crucial question ("Now say, how about religion?") In order to bring order into her life. So the song is the height of the crisis.

Goethe's poem is the 15th scene from Faust (1808); it can already be found in Urfaust (1775) in a slightly different form and consists of ten stanzas, with the fourth and eighth stanzas repeating the first as a refrain. Only two uplifts and free lowering fillings as meter reflect the explosiveness of the situation in their shortness of breath. It is more like a fragment of thought than a standard song text. It is fitting that only the second and fourth verses rhyme. The stanzas between the choruses each and together form an intensification, in front of which the chorus then seems more and more disillusioning.

Franz Schubert finds the form of the row rondo already pre-defined, but at the end he adds the first half of the chorus again, so that a tension arises between the rounded and open ending, which particularly emphasizes the hopelessness of Gretchen's emotional world. There is also a tension between the final structure (dynamic increase towards the end) and the rondo structure (round song with return to the same). In order to increase the intensity of their confusion, Schubert repeats the words “I find” in the refrain (Goethe did not appreciate such interventions in his work and preferred to stick to Friedrich Zelter's literal setting ).

My peace is gone,
my heart is heavy,
I find, I will never find it
anymore.

The first two verses are in D minor with organ point d, the last two verses in C major with organ point c, the tone peregrinus . So the refrain does not close in the starting key of D minor, which is only reached again through the interlude. This reflects the feeling of being thrown off course in the harmonious layout. It is also supported and enhanced by the tritone at the end of the melody and the irregular five measures of the last two verses (due to the repetition of “I find”) compared to the normal four measures of the first two verses. Incidentally, the shortness of breath of the verses with the two lifts corresponds to Schubert's structure of the melody in phrases (two-measure units), which, significantly, is only overridden in the second half of the refrain. The accompaniment imitates the turning of the spinning wheel with the constant up and down of the sixteenth-note figurations of the right hand, in the left hand you can hear the foot stepping on the pedal for the flywheel. At the same time, the accompaniment in the right hand also reflects Gretchen's restlessness in tone painting (“My rest is gone”) and in the left hand her pounding heart. Because two levels of meaning overlap here (the tone painting of the spinning wheel and Gretchen's state of mind), it is a semantic condensation that Schubert creates in his song - in contrast to the poem - and which is of great urgency. The couplets between the choruses are doubled: first in themselves and then in relation to each other. The first couplet (2nd and 3rd stanza) begins with the same phrase as the chorus, increases towards the end through the long lingering on e ″ and finally f ″ as well as the increasing volume, until finally at the words "my poor sense is me fragmented ”on the cadence in F major on the organ point F with“ wrong ”dominant (g reduced instead of C 7 ) on“ fragmented ”the collapse ensues. In the second couplet (5th – 7th stanza) the increase is again created by a crescendo, but above all by an ascending modulation via F g As B with each leading alternating dominant. This stands in relation to the previous chord in a mediante that creates a drifting, delimiting impression: Gretchen loses herself in her thoughts, her enthusiasm carries her away. Everything is aimed at the last verse "and oh, his kiss", in which the accompaniment, the spinning wheel, stands still, to completely make the deep impression of the first kiss on the high note g ″ and the tense chord basis (reduced seventh chord on G sharp, A 7 ) to make the song act relieved. The piano accompaniment starts again slowly and brokenly, and Gretchen tries to find a new hold in the chorus. The third couplet (9th and 10th stanza) is again harmonious and melodically increasing, and there is also an expansion due to the repetition of the tenth stanza and then again the repetition of the second part (“should go away on his kisses”) the absolute high tone a ″ on “wegehen”, all of this with acceleration, in forte and with consistently hard sforzati (strong accentuations) on every one of the measure. This creates the impression of being completely outside of oneself. When the refrain starts again after a decrescendo and ritardando , Gretchen's extraordinary crisis situation is emphatically communicated to the listener. Since the second half is missing, which would cause the song to end in the wrong key of C major due to the tonus peregrinus, the song ends - as it began - in D minor. The entire ending - nine bars of transition, first half of the refrain, aftermath - is only accompanied by D minor, which, according to the understanding of the time, is an expression of melancholy.

Recordings

There are remarkable shots of

Other notable recordings include Kathleen Ferrier , Renée Fleming , Christa Ludwig , Gundula Janowitz , Jessye Norman , Irmgard Seefried , Elisabeth Schumann , Lotte Lehmann , Rosette Anday , and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf .

literature

  • Walter Dürr, Arnold Feil: Reclam's music guide. Franz Schubert. Reclam, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-15-010367-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Walter Dürr, Arnold Feil: Reclams music guide. Franz Schubert. P. 40.
  2. ^ A b Walter Dürr, Arnold Feil: Reclams music guide. Franz Schubert. P. 44.