Franz Schubert wrote over 600 songs until his death in 1828 and possibly his greatest muse was the celebrated German poet and dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Although the two artists never shared a collaboration or even met they are linked forever by the masterworks that Schubert created which are still in overwhelming demand in performance around the world. Although the later song cycles, Die schöne Müllerin and Die Winterreise, are some of his best known works that show the composer at his peak creativity, I have chosen to analyze one of his earliest songs using a character from Goethe’s Faust legend, Gretchen am Spinnrade.
1. Background
Franz Schubert was born in Austria and at a very young age began to study music and singing while composing in his free time. He was a well-regarded boy singer but when his voice naturally matured he began to teach, which he dreaded. He had come to the attention of Antonio Salieri himself who encouraged the young Schubert to pursue his passion for composition. It was around this time that he had also become enamored of the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the German hero of literature. Among Schubert’s first published compositions were two songs that are legendary in the canon: Gretchen am Spinnrade and Erlkönig. Both show a youthful exuberance for illustration of meaning through musical motif but also point the way to his later growth in harmonic structure, something that could only have come out of the Mozart era that preceded him. Schubert found himself at the beginning of what is called the Romantic Era of music – gone was the high ceremony of court music and operas for emperors, nature and emotion took center stage. It was a period in which, as patronage waned and the arts were more and more in the popular arena, artists in all disciplines began to realize the need to express and explore the human condition that was universally relatable.
Some people have said that Goethe did not care for music which is not true: he had musical training himself as a young boy with his sister, but his tastes ran to simpler folk tunes rather than high-minded classical music. He had clear ideas of what song should be: strophic songs with a clear chorus and a simple melody that one could sing and remember. It is not surprising then that he disliked so much about the style of music that Schubert and his contemporaries were writing. Goethe felt that music should serve the poetry, not the other way around. “The purest and noblest form of painting in music is the one which you also practice – it’s a question of transporting the listener into the mood of the poem. To depict sounds by sounds: to thunder, warble, ripple and splash is abominable.” It is said that in 1816 Schubert sent a group of songs to Goethe in tribute for his collection and never received a response; many people believe that it is because of the author’s disdain for this onomatopoeia that the composer was ignored.
2. Harmonic/Textual Analysis
Rushing streams, spinning wheels, and harmonic complexity were all tools that Schubert used to compose his songs, his chamber works, and his symphonies. Gretchen am Spinnrade, written in 1814, is one of his earliest works (it may very well have been included in that package sent to Goethe) and it shows the young composer stretching harmonic boundaries to illuminate the poetry he had chosen for his setting. He was born after Mozart’s death but the latter’s influence can clearly be seen even in this early work – the use of diminished chords and inventive harmonic progressions as a way to elevate text and meaning came directly from Mozart’s precedent. Schubert chose to accentuate the extreme emotion conveyed in the text with a rapid jumbling of keys, chords with flat 7s and 9s attached and a rumbling melodic line in the right hand of the piano accompaniment that quickly became his calling card.
Gretchen am Spinnrade is a strophic song in 3 verses, very much in the manner of folksong. The scene unfolds as a monologue in Gretchen’s home after meeting Faust for the first time and she is completely in love. However his hold on her is so strong that she is pining for him and so afraid that she will never see him again; she longs for him and only finds solace in remembering his embrace. Schubert uses several musical motifs to illustrate the scene. One is the figure in the right hand – Gretchen’s spinning wheel and the thread she creates. It changes in speed and key depending on how agitated or happy she is but it stays ever constant. Another is the left hand, a bass note and a continually repeated eighth note pattern. This does feel like the pedal of a spinning wheel that she pushes to spin the thread (the melody), but it also has the feel of a heartbeat as Gretchen vacillates between longing and anxiety.
The song starts in D minor, a key associated with sorrow and longing. Schubert rejects the common harmonic progression of I-IV-V-I and sets up a chorus for Gretchen in the minor key, i-VII-vi-VII-i, which serves to set the tension for the listener. Gretchen sings that she is completely lost to the grave because Faust is gone and the verse moves quickly into E minor and stresses an A major chord (V), while the melody is moving stepwise in and out of the established tonality and eventually returning to the D minor chorus. This chromatic descent back to the original key is indicative of her sorrow. The second verse moves in a happier, if more scattered, direction from D minor into A minor while flirting with an augmented V chord with a B natural. Gretchen consoles herself by remembering all the wonderful things about her new lover – his face, his walk, holding his hand – as she works herself into a frenzy. Schubert creates a whirlwind major key transition sequence that lands firmly in F major and the tension between the B flat IV chord and the C major V flat 7 leads directly to the climax on “Küss!” at the double fermata bar with a mystery chord. It could be a diminished v7 chord in F major, or it could be a diminished vii chord making its way back to D minor. The fermata is arresting: while the left hand is in open fifths through the harmonic chaos, all motion stops in this bar and there is silence as Gretchen relishes the memory of that kiss and slowly comes back to reality, half-heartedly pushing the pedal of the wheel as she returns to her spinning. The interlude before the third verse travels through A major (with a flat 9), using it as a V chord to return to the last D minor chorus.
In the third and final verse Gretchen is distraught and cries that she is lost without her lover and wants nothing more to feel his embrace or be lost forever. As the crescendo starts through the verse mirroring her disquiet the harmony moves into another series of major keys through each bar. By the time she sings, “und küssen ihn so wie ich vollt,” the song settles into E major while playing with A major as a IV-V pivot to get back to D minor where it stays for the remainder of the song. The only major chord in the entire last page is the V chord underneath “vergehen” (“lost”) on the high A, a textual contradiction perhaps to show the sheer force of emotion. The piano takes over, back into the spinning motif and ends very softly without changing a chord once, the D minor resolution mirroring her feeling of defeat in the face of fate.
3. Conclusion
At first hearing, Gretchen am Spinnrade can seem elementary and heavy handed. The spinning wheel is obvious, the bass motion of the pedal – these are tricks many listeners are used to hearing in young composers. But the harmonic complexity Schubert brought to this early composition show that he was proudly carrying on and advancing the precedents set by Mozart and Beethoven. Mozart’s use of the Neapolitan chord (II6) has a direct link to Schubert, and later Schumann, Brahms, and all the way up to Lizst. But what Schubert was able to help usher in in his short life was the essence of the Romantic Era: using nature as a metaphor for the human condition and the necessity to have music serve as not just an illustrator but a co-conspirator of poetry. This particular song written when he was only 17 years old shows a glimpse of what was to come from this gifted and prolific composer.
Works Cited
Brensilver, David. "Franz Schubert Biography." n.d. www.allmusic.com. Web. 6 Feb 2016.
Schubert, Franz. "Gretchen am Spinnrade." Ed. Max Reger. Vienna: Universal Edition, 1926. Plate 34045. PDF.
Stokes, Richard. "Goethe the Musician and his Influence on German Song." 20 April 2008. www.gresham.ac.uk. Web. 8 Feb 2016.
