Death and the Maiden (song)

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Death and the Maiden is an art song by Franz Schubert for voice with piano accompaniment in D minor D 531, which was composed in 1817 and published in 1822 as No. 3 of the song book Opus 7. The text is based on the poem of the same name by Matthias Claudius , based on the subject Death and the Maiden, which has been known since the 15th century . The range extends from the small a to the two-stroke es , which corresponds to the mezzo-soprano or ( octaves ) the baritone register . This means that the song can also be singed by ambitious amateurs.

layout

From the dialogue of the original text by Claudius, Schubert creates a small scene through prelude and epilogue that emphasizes a revaluation of death as a friend more strongly than is the case with Claudius.

The 43-bar song begins with an eight-bar introduction, whereby the first four bars (= 1st half-movement: first cadence in D minor, then alternating between tonic and dominant ) are repeated, creating an eight-bar period that has been due to the classical music its symmetry is an expression of balance, rounding, harmony and coherence. The five-part chords are kept to the rhythm of the Pavane (half, quarter, quarter). Pavans are originally slow step dances of the Renaissance , but around 1600 they were also used as an expression of melancholy and Weltschmerz, for example by John Dowland . In addition, they were also used as funeral and funeral music in the sense of the tombeau . In this semantics , Schubert also uses the pavan rhythm to characterize death.

The girl's fear and agitation is not only expressed in the odd number of 13 bars that each period undercuts (11 bars without piano replay, 9 bars without repetition of the last verse). "Minor - fast, irregular rhythm - restless, jagged, predominantly ascending melody - forte - high register" and chord repetitions in eighth notes in the piano accompaniment, constantly changing between right and left, characterize the girl's distress.

The 16 bars of death, on the other hand, are two periods delimited by caesura (long notes, pause) whose half-sentences (4 bars) coincide with the verses of the poem. Already through this symmetry and the steadfast progression in the pavan rhythm, death exudes calm, together with the other parameters also confidence and friendliness: "Major - calm, even rhythm - immovable melody - tone repetitions - piano - low register".

The epilogue repeats the prelude, but in D major and shortened to six bars due to the double embroidery of the bars: the first bar of the sequel overlaps with the final bar of the vocal part and the last bar of the first half-movement with the first of the second half-movement. In addition, apart from the cadencing point at the end of each half-movement, the melody remains constant on d, the bass remains predominantly on d. In combination with a chordal cadenza and a steady pavana rhythm, both aim at statics in the sense of calm, gentleness and security.

The detailed analysis reveals two more interesting observations. With the exception of the small final turns at the end of each period, death has only the tone d or, in the setting of the 3rd verse of the death strophe, the tone f. This "reciting, psalm-modifying way of singing", plus a "chorale-like chordal compact movement", "simple cadence harmony" and moderate tempo characterize the aura spread by death as "gentle, serious, solemn, ritual, calm, relentless; lifeless, ecclesiastical, safe ”. With the modulation at the end of the first period (on “don't come to punish”), the change to major takes place, which is emphasized by the temporary raising of the recitation tone after f and maintained until the end.

The second observation concerns the onset of the pavan rhythm in the girl's stanza with the beginning of the fourth verse (“and don't touch me”). The trigger is the word dearer in front of it. If it were lower case, it would mean “go better”, upper case it is the point where “the girl uses flattery as a last resort when her resistance collapses” or has already succumbed to the aura of death in a semantic condensation . The pavane rhythm of death is underlaid to the last verse of the girl's stanza that follows, the melody is a downward-pointing line, forced by the repetition, which is a third lower and ends on the lowest note that the girl sings. This and the wordless two-bar epilogue show that the girl surrendered to death and, according to Schubert's design, tended to give up. This shows the girl's reaction in the music, which is missing in Claudius' poem.

Of the 43 bars, only seven bars do not show the pavan rhythm that dominates the song as a symbol of death. Its appearance in the prelude and epilogue sets a framework both externally in the sense of a rounding (through the change from minor to major also in the sense of a development) and internally in the sense of an aura within which the event takes place. The song is thus also an expression of closeness to death, which is not perceived negatively in romanticism , but often as a release from tensions that cannot be resolved in life. Thomas Mann's assertion that romanticism is "in its innermost essence seduction, namely seduction to death", can be understood with the help of this song. This is all the more remarkable as the poem originates from the 18th century and still shows clear features of the Enlightenment opposed by Romanticism . Through the music, the structure of the composition and the details shown above, Schubert achieves a spiritual penetration that the short dialogue of the original cannot have.

Further uses of the melody in classical music

In 1824 Franz Schubert composed his String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, D 810. The second movement, entitled Andante con moto , is a series of variations on the introduction to Schubert's art song, which is why the quartet is entitled Der Tod and the girl is known.

Peter Cornelius used Schubert's quartet for the fourth of his five funeral choirs, Op. 9, which he wrote in autumn 1869. He provided the melody with a new, self-written text "Pilgrims on earth, so raced at the goal" .

The American composer David Lang processed the theme in his 2012 composition Death Speaks .

literature

  • Hubert Wißkirchen: Didactic principles of piano song analysis in upper secondary school , in Zeitschrift für Musikpädagogik 14th year, issue 49 March 1989. A detailed analysis from which one derives a lot of profit. Only the term dactylus is wrong: musically it is the pavan rhythm and the poem consists only of iambes.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hubert Wißkirchen : Didactic principles of piano song analysis in upper secondary school , in Zeitschrift für Musikpädagogik, 14th year, issue 49 March 1989, p. 4
  2. ↑ Hubert Wißkirchen: Didactic principles of piano song analysis in upper secondary school , p. 4
  3. ↑ Hubert Wißkirchen: Didactic principles of piano song analysis in upper secondary school , p. 10
  4. ↑ Hubert Wißkirchen: Didactic principles of piano song analysis in upper secondary school , p. 6
  5. ↑ quoted from Diether Krywalski: Handlexikon zur Literaturwissenschaft Vol. 2 , Rowohlt Taschenbuch, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1978, ISBN 3499162229 , p. 430
  6. ^ Pilgrims on earth at the German National Library
  7. ↑ www.musikmph.de ( Memento of the original from January 31, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.musikmph.de
  8. ↑ death speaks text by David Lang. Retrieved September 18, 2018.