Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: A Primer for Singers

Gabriel Alfieri

W
Gabriel Alfieri

few poets figure so prominently as Goethe, and few singers are not eventually called upon to interpret the work of this colossal literary figure. His words are virtually ubiquitous throughout the history of the lied; his plays and novels inspired dramatic music throughout the nineteenth century; and whether one asks Kennst du das Land? or Connais-tu le pays? Mignons nostalgic query has become musics most famous question. Except for Shakespeare, no other literary figure seems to have established so formidable a presence in the history of classical music, or left so indelible a mark upon the lyric landscape. The purpose of this writing is to offer singers some historical perspective on the man behind the words behind the music; to describe some of the context in which his characters and ideas live in their original literary incarnations; and to help the singer of Goethes words, characters, and ideas gain a deeper understanding not only of this poets place in music history, but of the music that he inspired.1

ITHIN THE REALM OF CLASSICAL VOCAL MUSIC ,

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the titan of German letters, was born at Frankfurt am Main in 1749. To put that into musical perspective, 1750, the year of Bachs death, is generally given as a convenient marker between the Baroque and Classical periods; Hndel lived until 1759. At Goethes birth, Haydn was already seventeen years old; Mozart was born seven years later. The poet was twenty-one at Beethovens birth and forty-eight at Schuberts. Yet Goethe outlived all three of the great Classicists, and several of the first generation of Romantics. Indeed, musical Romanticism was already well under way at his death in 1832: Carl Maria von Weber, the first great Romantic German opera composer, and Schubert, the first great lied composer, both predeceased him. Goethe lived eighty-two years, long enough to see his work influence several generations of musicians; and it is, in fact, nineteenth century Romanticism that owes the most to his art and ideas.
Haydn and the Sturm und Drang
Journal of Singing, November/December 2006 Volume 63, No. 2, pp. 151159 Copyright 2006 National Association of Teachers of Singing

The primary historical connection between Haydn (17321809) and Goethe is the artistic epithet, Sturm und Drang2 (Storm and Stress), the name given to an avant-garde submovement of eighteenth century Classicism, charac-

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Gabriel C. Alfieri terized by a sort of proto-Romantic emotional hypersensitivity (Empfindsamkeit), and a decidedly melodramatic impulse in the arts. Goethe gave the movement its most important literary work with his first great novel, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther), originally published in 1774. In hindsight, the epithet, as applied to music, is borrowed from literature, although the expressive similarities clearly bespeak a common inspirational Zeitgeist. Haydns great experimental Sturm und Drang works were produced approximately between 1766 and 1774, during his first years at Eszterhza.3 The movement was short lived, and it is primarily thanks to Haydnand Goethethat its name remains so firmly fixed in the modern musical lexicon.
Mozart

Although Mozart (17561791) set only one Goethe text, Das Veilchen, he seems to have embodied the poets musical ideal more perfectly than any other composer of the period. In 1763, the fourteen-year-old Goethe heard a concert given in Frankfurt by the seven-year-old Mozart. As director of the Court Theater at Weimar, a post he held from 1791 to 1817, Goethe frequently produced Mozarts operas and Singspiele. In fact, . . . The Magic Flute, with its heady mixture of pantomime, sentiment, cosmic symbolism and Enlightenment ethics . . . captivated Goethes interest to the extent that in 17956 he began work on a sequel to Schikaneders libretto, Der Zauberflte zweiter Teil (The Magic Flute, Part Two).4 Although the work was never completed (Schikaneder produced his own sequel in 1798), the genre of the Singspiel, and even certain particulars of Der Zauberflte zweiter Teil, seem to have had a marked influence upon Faust, especially Part TwoGoethe himself is said to have felt that only Mozart would have written the perfect music for his final masterpiece.5
Beethoven

It is sometimes said that Goethe was a poor judge of musicat least the music of his contemporaries. He revered Bach and Hndel, in keeping with a certain artistic atavism; the same, perhaps, that compelled him to seek a universally applicable order within the structure and substance of Classic Greco-Roman exemplars. Mozarts art is commonly said to have embodied his mu-

sical ideal: expressions of great force and sensitivity no less profound for their being perfectly moderated within the architecture of the new Classicism.6 So Goethe cannot have been so poor a judge after all; something else, then, must have accounted for his antipathy, to make him shun the art of composers like Beethoven, Schubert, and Berlioz. To Goethe, Beethoven (17701827) was an untamed genius whose excesses seemed to tip the scales of emotional balance so vital to the poet. Looking back, Goethe apparently regarded his own youthful excesses (e.g., Werther) as almost an illness, anguishing and even life threatening, from which he delivered himself through the healing order of Classicism (and Italy)7certainly not something he wished to relive. He undoubtedly sensed an emotional danger in the music of Beethoven, Schubert, and others, the danger of that same disorder and early sorrow against which he had fought, and triumphed, within himselfthe same sort of danger he rightly perceived in the events of the French Revolution. Toward the end of his life, Goethe befriended the young Felix Mendelssohn, who wrote that the poet wanted to have nothing to do with Beethoven, but . . . I played [him] the first part of the Symphony in C minor . . . [A]t first he said, this arouses no emotion, nothing but astonishment; it is grandiose . . . [A]fter a long pause he began again, It is very great; quite wild; it makes one fear that the house might fall down . . .8 Although Beethoven revered Goethe as an artist and cultural icon, he was unable to condone the poets reactionary social and political views, especially his attraction to court life9 and his opposition to the revolutions in France. Beethoven set several Goethe texts as individual lieder, and there exists an early sketch for a setting of Erlknig, abandoned by Beethoven but eventually completed and published by Reinhold Becker in 1897. The cantata, Meeresstille und glckliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage), and the Bundeslied (Song of Fellowship) for chorus and orchestra, are both settings of Goethe texts. Yet it is the famous overture of 1809, Opus 84, written for a production of Goethes tragic drama, Egmont,10 that most often calls to mind the collusion of these two Olympians of German art. The two met face to face only once, at Tepliz in 1812.
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Schubert

Franz Schubert (17971828) set more than four dozen Goethe texts in his short life, many of them several times. His Opus One was the inimitable Erlknig,11 published in 1821 (although originally written six years earlier). He also composed an opera, now lost, to Goethes play, Claudine von Villa Bella. And yet the poet is well documented as having preferred the simple strophes of his friend Carl Friedrich Zelter. Apparently, he felt little but contempt for Schuberts settings of his works, for twice Schubert sent his songs to Goethe, and twice Goethe failed to reply. The narrative through-composition, the spectacular pianistic tone painting, the dramatic vocal writing, all of these flew in the face of the poets most fundamental convictions regarding the synthesis of words and music.12 For Goethe, strophic setting allowed the music to underscore the poetic unity of a work, whereas throughcomposition attenuated or fragmented that unity. The metric, strophic, and formal construction of a poem was as essential to it as its subject, nor could any one of these elements be sacrificed to music without damaging the success of the whole, and the primary achievement of the poet. Any song setting must maintain and convey the universal Form, the poetic Ideal, which Goethe had worked to reflect in his poem: to do so was nothing less than the ideological imperative of Classicism. To fail was to rob the poem not only of its exemplary power, but of its fundamental reason for being. Only the composer who recognized this and honored itsubmitted to it, if you willcould hope to receive Goethes approval.13 Nevertheless, the poets spirit met Schuberts on some plane somewhere, a place where ideology held no sway, and it is one of the great artistic collusions of all time: An Schwager Kronos, An den Mond, Wandrers Nachtlied, Rastlose Liebe, Heidenrslein, Gretchen am Spinnrade, Prometheus, Ganymed, Der Musensohn, and so many more, including at least one Schubertian setting of virtually every poem mentioned in this writing.14
Werther

the case through history that music culminates what literature commences, so that nineteenth century Romanticism in music is usually observed to have its first major flowering during the mature work period of Beethoven,15 several decades later than the publication of Goethes novel. Interestingly, Goethe himself formulated his (proto-) Romantic ethos of Sturm und Drang and the emotionally turbulent life of young Werther early in his career, progressing to an ardent, albeit complex, Classicism in later life, rather opposite the general tide of history at the time.16 Werther is a young man ruled and eventually ruined by his own unmediated passion. Shortly after arriving for a stay in the country, he meets Lotte (Charlotte), with whom he falls obsessively in love. But Lotte is engaged to Albert, not only by genuine affection but by the unspoken wish of her dying mother. Werthers frustrated obsession becomes increasingly disturbing to all three as he spirals ever further into despondency until finally, unable to adapt to the peculiar combination of fate and sensibility at work within him, unable to possess Charlotte absolutely, he takes his own life with his rivals revolver. The novel, in epistolary form (letters, mostly from Werther), is replete with elements that will come to exemplify German Romanticism in the nineteenth century: the exaltation of Nature, the idealization (and idolization) of rural folk life,17 the extremities of human emotion, and the conjunction of love and death. When first published, it caused a sensation: Impressionable young men dressed themselves like Werther, in blue coat and yellow vest, and even a rash of suicides is reported. Goethe had created the prototypal Romantic hero, a young man of such heightened sensibility that he allows himself to be sacrificed upon the altar of impossible passion. The novel was popular through the century following its publication, and was finally brought to the operatic stage by Jules Massenet in 1892.18
Wilhelm Meister

The Sorrows of Young Werther was a monumental popular success at its debut, and among the first masterpieces of that Romantic impulse which musicians generally associate with the nineteenth century. It is often
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Of all Goethes prose works (as distinct from poetry or drama), his novel, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship), contains the most musical material, that is to say, actual song texts originally designated as such within the narrative structure. In fact, the original publication, from 1795, contained printed

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Gabriel C. Alfieri music for several of its songs, composed by Johann Friedrich Reichardt. This rambling, eclectic, improbable masterpiece tells the story of young Wilhelm Meister, son of an upstanding middle class Brger, who sets out into the world full of youthful idealism and a passion for the theater. His apprenticeship is accomplished under the influence of actors, impresarios, aristocrats, and other, often clandestine, masters. Along the way, he takes under his wing and into his heart a young waif named Mignon, an orphan girl of obscure origin, dark skinned and otherworldly, and the Harper (der Harfner or Harfenspieler, sometimes alternately translated as Minstrel or Harpist), an aged, itinerant musician whose bitterness and misery are matched only by his mysterious reticence regarding their cause. Eventually, Wilhelm is led away from the theater and into the sphere of certain extraordinary and beneficent mentors who point him toward his true calling and ultimate value to society. The characters of Mignon and the Harper provide the primary vehicles by which Goethe inserts songs into the fabric of his novel; and the songs themselves provide valuable insight into their singers characters. Mignon is first encountered performing with a sort of traveling circus. When Wilhelm witnesses her suffering abuse at the hand of the troupe leader, he intervenes, rescues her, and assumes responsibility for her; she, in turn, becomes his devoted servant and companion. She is a tomboy, possessed of great physical skill as a dancer, acrobat, and contortionist, and insists upon wearing boys clothes. Although still a child in body, she is just old enough to feel the first stirrings of adult desire toward her benefactor (and commensurate jealousy over his interest in a pretty young actress); as she tells us in one of her songs, sorrow has aged me too soon. In her first lyric, Kennst du das Land, Mignon sings longingly of her mysterious homeland. Set to music by Wolf, Schumann, Schubert, Beethoven, Liszt, Spohr, Spontini, Zelter, Reichardt, and others, it is among the most often set poems of the nineteenth century. Goethe himself provides the singer with valuable insight into its performance.
[Wilhelm] asked her to repeat [the song], and explain it; then he . . . translated it into German. He found, however, that . . . the childlike innocence of the style was lost when the broken language was smoothed over and the disconnectedness removed. She intoned each verse with a certain solemn grandeur, as if she were drawing attention to something unusual and imparting something of importance. When she reached the third line . . . the words You know it, yes? were given weightiness and mystery, the Oh there, oh there! was suffused with longing, and she modified the phrase Let us fare! each time it was repeated, so that one time it was entreating and urging, the next time pressing and full of promise. When she had finished the song a second time she paused, looked straight at Wilhelm, and asked: Do you know that land? It must be Italy, Wilhelm replied. Where did you get the song? Italy! said Mignon in a meaningful tone; if you go to Italy take me with you. Im freezing here. Have you ever been there? asked Wilhelm; but the child kept silent and not one word more could be elicited from her.19

Mignons other songs also touch upon her mysterious past (Heiss mich nicht reden), her ambiguous desire (Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, sung, in the novel, as a duet with the Harper),20 and her ecstatic vision of heaven (So lass mich scheinen) just prior to her death.21 Like Mignon, the Harper is rescued and succored by Wilhelm, adopted into his itinerant artistic family. It is clear from the first that he is haunted, even tormented, by some event from his past which he refuses, like Mignon, to reveal. He believes himself cursed, though the reader is not told the nature of the curse till the last. Furthermore, he is convinced that this curse will involve the ruin of anyone to whom he binds himself; hence, he must live out his life in the hopelessness of fate-imposed isolation. Eventually, we learn of the incestuous affair of his youth, and its far-reaching, tragic repercussions. His songs are lanced with despair and bitterness, an anguished melancholy of often frightening profundity, the consolations of someone who feels he is near to madness.22 These two strange and expressive characters provide Wilhelm with vital parts of his apprenticeship; their fantastic and interconnected stories are revealed in the end as part of the labyrinthine concatenation of lives and events that lead ultimately to him and the choices he must make. They also provided Goethe with the vehicles for some of his most inspiring lyrics. The fact that they are incorporated into a novel, through the course of which much is revealed not only about the singers but about the songs, and which, in turn, is given depth and resonance as much by the narrative act of singing as by the songs themselves; this fact is, for the latter day, nonJ OU R NA L
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: A Primer for Singers fictional singer, a special gift of insight from the author, one we must make good use of, as each composer must undoubtedly have done. but not before a voice from above proclaims that Gretchens soul is saved. As Part Two26 opens, Faust is discovered reclining in a charming landscape, after the emotionally exhausting ordeal in Gretchens prison cell. A chorus of spirits revives him, and he eventually arrives at the court of an Emperor much in need of cash. Faust obliges (with Mephistos help) by producing plenty of gold and paper currency. The Emperor then expresses his wish to see Faust conjure up Helen of Troy and her lover-abductor, Paris. When the classical pair materialize, Faust is immediately smitten with the Grecian beauty.27 Eventually, Mephisto transports Faust back to ancient Greece, where he and Helen become lovers. A son, Euphorion, is born to them, but all too soon both mother and son are lost to Faust, whereupon he recommences his journeys with Mephisto, through time and space. The pair once more comes to the aid of the Emperor, this time to win a war. As his reward, Faust is granted a large span of coastland and, in the final act, he is discovered living in a palace by the sea, now an old man again, engaged in his most ambitious project ever, the reclamation of vast tracts of land from the ocean. But he dies before the work is finished, and Mephisto prepares to snatch his soul to hell, only to be foiled on the brink of triumph by a bevy of enticing cherubs who distract him just long enough to rob him of his prize. Fausts soul is carried up to heaven and, like Gretchen, he is redeemed. Goethes masterpiece captured the imagination of composers from the start. The first large-scale musical work based on the play (of which only the various versions of Part One were published at the time) is Louis Spohrs opera Faust of 1816. In 1829, Hector Berlioz completed his Eight Scenes from Faust, shortly after Part One of the play had its Parisian premire; he sent the score to Goethe but, like Schubert, received no reply. Later, about 1846, this work was expanded into the great dramatic legend, The Damnation of Faust, a concert opera for soloists, chorus, and orchestra. Between 1844 and 1853, Robert Schumann composed his late masterpiece, Scene from Goethes Faust, for soloists, chorus, and orchestra. Franz Liszts Faust Symphony, for tenor solo, male chorus, and orchestra, had its premire in 1857; Liszt described his three-movement work as character sketches of Faust, Gretchen, and Mephisto.28 In 1859, Charles Gounod produced perhaps the best known Faust

FAUST
The writing of his masterwork, the dramatic retelling of the Faust legend, spanned Goethes entire career, and most of his life. It was published in its entirety only after his death, according to his wishes, but evidence suggests that he initially conceived the piece during his early twenties.23 The work abounds with reference to music: No less than twenty-five of the plays stage directions indicate some form of musical addition. The tale of the disillusioned old scholar who makes a pact with the devil dates back to the Middle Ages. Goethe used the popular legend as the scaffold for some of his most brilliant and profound worka darkly burlesque tragicomedy, full of devils and angels, spirits and witches, mythological figures and sympathetic humanity, delivered in a stunning progression of dramatic architectonics. In Part One, we first encounter Faust nearing his end with no sense of peace or satisfaction nor any definitive insight into the fundamental truths of existence, despite a life of eleemosynary and scholarly pursuits. In this state of despair, he is visited by Mephisto (or Mephistopheles), a demon who offers him the possibility of profound revelations through experience. In exchange, Faust promises his soul to the devil, should he ever arrive at a state of contentment. Mephisto begins by regaining youth and virility for Faust, from a witch and her kitchenfull of talking monkeys! He then proceeds to introduce Faust to all the pleasures of the flesh. With demonic aid, and a few trinkets of jewelry, Faust seduces Margarete (or Gretchen),24 a poor seamstress whose beauty and innocence have aroused his appetites. All too soon, pregnant and disgraced, her brother dead by her lovers sword, Gretchen is deserted by Faust, who leaves to continue his frantic pursuit of an elusive enlightenment. Eventually, she is imprisoned and condemned to die for the murders of her own mother and newborn child. After the fantastic revels of Walpurgisnacht,25 Fausts conscience forces him to return to rescue Gretchen, only to find her mad with guilt and despair, unwilling to leave her prison cell. Finally, Mephisto drags him away from the prison,
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Gabriel C. Alfieri of all, his opra lyrique masterpiece based on portions of Part One, which remains to this day the most widely popular musical version of Goethes drama. Arrigo Boito, Verdis late, great librettist,29 and a composer in his own right, based his own musical chef-duvre upon Goethes play; his opera, Mefistofele, has been called the most ambitious setting of Goethes Faust, 30 perhaps because it incorporates elements from both parts of the original play, including the prologue in heaven, during which God and Mephistopheles wager, Job-like, over the soul of Faust; Fausts journey to classical Greece, and his affair with Helen; and, in an epilogue, the depiction of Fausts final salvation (based, contrary to Goethes original, upon an ultimate act of repentance). The opera had a disastrous premire in 1868, but was revised and reintroduced in 1875 to great acclaim. It maintained some degree of popularity through much of the twentieth century, only falling from the standard repertoire in America within the past few decades. And Gustav Mahler chose the final scene from Goethes drama, virtually intact, as the text for the second part of his massive Symphony of a Thousand, No. 8, scored for eight soloists, three choirs, and (large) orchestra, completed in 1907 and given its premiere in 1910. Mahler uses Goethes mystical portrayal of redemption to counterbalance and answer the supplication of the symphonys first part. Perhaps the best known song setting from Faust is Schuberts Gretchen am Spinnrade, which is, in fact, an entire scene from Part One, during which Gretchen expresses her foreboding over her growing attraction to Faust. Contrary to the occasional singerly assumption that Gretchen has already been deserted in this scene, she has actually only just had her first kiss from Faust, though her feelings for him are already disturbingly strong. She sings of her uneasiness and agitation; desire, longing have stolen away her former peace and she suspects, prophetically, that she never shall have it back.31 Other songs from Faust include the comic Flohlied, about a very well dressed flea, sung in the play by Mephisto as he introduces Faust to the pleasures of the wine cellar; and Der Knig in Thule,32 sung by Gretchen as she prepares for bed after meeting Faust for the first time, just before she notices the jewels he has surreptitiously left herthe same jewels with which she adorns herself as she sings the spectacular Jewel Song (Je ris de me voir) in Act Three of Gounods opera.

CONCLUSIONS
Despite the universality of his characters, or stories, or ideas, Goethes genius as a sculptor of language is peculiarly German. The brilliance of his linguistic lyricism is specifically dependent upon the sounds and rhythms of the German language. For this reasonhis uncanny, unmatched ability to create images of sound in German even the most sensitive English translation loses at least some, often much, of the inimitably German, inimitably Goethean, complexion of the original. Comparing even the best English translations of Goethe to, say, Byron or Keats or Blake, his English contemporaries, one might question the genius of his poetic craft. Conversely, the singer who knows German pronunciation, even without understanding the words, can read Goethes poetry aloud, in its original language, and hear quite clearly the euphony and lyric brilliance of the German, totally apart (though it never was totally apart for the poet) from the meaning of the words.33 The inherentand, for composers, obviously irresistiblelyricism of Goethes writing also may help to account for his antipathy toward musical settings that obscured his own linguistic music.34 That notwithstanding, what non-German speakers may miss of the nuances and subtle subtexts of the original German, the best composers can help give back to us, to greater or lesser extents, through their own translations into the universal language of music. Hence, the song settings of Goethes words, especially those of his contemporary countrymen, actually may aid in our understanding of the genius of his craftsmanship, as well as his art. It is hoped that the reader may be led to seek out the original Goethe, the words before the music, in an attempt to apprehend the primary poetic impulse, as well as the original source of musical inspiration. All musicians, but especially singers, should familiarize themselves with the works of this great artist who inspired so much music across the last two centuries. In doing so, we inevitably must come to a deeper appreciation of the privilege and responsibility of being the one instrument capable of combining words and music.

NOTES
1. Like many great writers, Goethe often wrote about himself, more or less overtly, so that some knowledge of his life, and J OU R NA L
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especially those portions of it that have some direct bearing upon a particular poem or characterization, can be a useful door into the deeper life of the work. Unfortunately, that level of biographical detail is outside the scope of this writing. See John R. William, The Life of Goethe: A Critical Biography (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1998), which is extremely well researched and written, and very effectively organized as a reference. 2. The Sturm und Drang movement, which takes its name from a 1776 play by Maximilian Klinger, owes much to the nobly savage ideas of the French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (17121778). A short lived phenomenon, it perhaps best is observed and understood in historical perspective as part of an overall urge toward Enlightenment that subsumed both Classicism and Romanticism in the arts, as well as the whole of the politico-philosophical foment that ushered in the age of revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, continuing well into the twentieth. 3. Musical Sturm und Drang is characterized by minor tonalities, angular melodies, agitated or stormy moods, abrupt contrasts (in dynamics, etc.), and other dramatic effects, within the architecture of the Classical idiom. Haydns symphonies, (e.g., Nos. 44, 45, and 49), contain the most often cited examples; his vocal works from this period included the opera, Linfedelt delusa, and the Missa Sancta Ccilia. His semisequestration at Eszterhza actually may have contributed to such experimentation. C. P. E. Bach generally is identified as musics other great Sturm und Drang exponent. 4. Williams, 149. 5. Ibid., 51, 150. 6. Nothing this writer has read indicates how Goethe may have felt about the work of that other great musical Classicist, Franz Joseph Haydn. 7. Like so many artists through history, Goethe lived and traveled for some time in Italy and was profoundly influenced by his experiences there. This italienische Reise helped him to formulate those concepts of Classicism so vital to his life and work thereafter. 8. Gisella Selden-Goth, ed., Felix Mendelssohn: Letters (New York: Vienna House, 1973), 71. 9. Goethe was a courtier at Weimar for several years, where he was eventually granted the patent of nobility, signaled by the titular von added to his name. 10. Beethoven also wrote incidental music for the production, including two songs, Die Trommel geruhret, and Freudvoll und leidvoll, gedankenvoll sein. 11. Williams points out that Goethes early ballad, Erlknig, from 1782, is based upon Johann Herders translation of a Danish folk ballad about the daughter of the Elf King. However, N OV E M B E R /D E C E M B E R 2006 the proper translation of the German Erlknig is not Elf King, but rather, Alder King (as in alder tree). Herder apparently confused the Danish for elf and alder (although the sylvan association is intriguing), and thus it is actually as the Alder King, rather than the Elf King, that the poem has come down to us. See Williams, 86. 12. Although several of Schuberts settings would seem to conform to Goethes ideological strictures, others, such as Erlknig, clearly do not. Nevertheless, at the time, Goethe did not see fit to acknowledge Schuberts offerings in any way. Many years later, when Goethe heard Erlknig sung by Wilhelmine Schrder-Devrient (Wagners first Senta and Venus), he reportedly admitted to the power and imagery of Schuberts evocative setting. 13. Curiously, he seems to have had a different idea about music for the theater, in which milieu he considered that the playwright must generally defer to the composer. 14. Dover has published a collection of all of Schuberts Goethe songs originally contained in the Breitkopf & Hrtel Franz Schubert: Werke from 18841897. It is a fascinating compendium, showing, in many cases, variant versions made by Schubert of the same work (four versions of Erlknig, for example). All songs are in the original keys, which means, generally, high voice. 15. I use Beethoven here to identify a period in time, during which his musical hegemony in Europe was at its height, rather than to associate his work during this period with one or the other musical style. 16. It is more common to view Goethes Sturm und Drang work as a viable early manifestation of Romanticism than Haydns, which may be partly explained by the fact that the defining structural elements of Classical musicmany of which Haydn himself was innovating at this timeremain definitive even to his Sturm und Drang works, whereas similar elements in literature may be less persuasively defining. 17. Folk art and the folk ethos became an area of interest for many artists at this time, including Goethe and his circle. Haydn and Beethoven both made numerous arrangements of folk songs from various countries. Not only was the folk ideal important to incipient Romanticism, for its perceived emotional directness and forceful simplicity, it was also a source of information and inspiration in a growing search for national identity that was to become so powerful a force in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 18. Massenets Werther exists in both tenor and baritone versions. 19. Eric A. Blackall, ed. and trans., in cooperation with Victor Lange, Goethe: The Collected Works. Vol. 9, Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 834.

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20. Also sometimes titled simply, Sehnsucht; in English, it is popularly known as None but the Lonely Heart. Schubert, for one, did set it as a duet, D. 877. 21. Although the popular nineteenth century French composer, Ambroise Thomas, used Goethes Mignon as the heroine (and title) of his most celebrated opera, his plot line has little in common with Goethes. Today, the opera has long since fallen from the standard repertoire, though the aria, Connaistu le pays, remains a popular showpiece for coloratura sopranos. 22. Wilhelm Meister, 77, 203. 23. The final version of Faust is in two parts: Part One, completed in 1806, remains the most familiar today, even in Germany, thanks partly to its musical representations. There also exist two other versions to which the singer may occasionally find reference made: the so-called Urfaust, an early draft of Part One, rediscovered and published in 1887, long after Goethes death; and Faust. A Fragment, which contains portions of Part One, and which he published, to great popular interest, in 1790. Part Two was completed just a few months before the poets death in 1832. 24. In German, Gretchen is the sobriquet or pet name for the Margarete. 25. In German folklore, Walpurgisnacht (St. Walburgas Night), April 30, is the date of the annual gathering of witches atop the Blocksberg, or Brocken mountain, in the Harz Mountains of northern central Germany. Mendelssohns secular cantata, The First Walpurgis Night, is based upon a separate ballad by Goethe. 26. Part Two is of rather less importance in the history of music than Part One. However, for the sake of consistency and an understanding of the scope of the entire saga, I include its synopsis here. 27. In spite of her epithet, recall that Helen was a Grecian queen, abducted by the Trojan prince, Paris, thus instigating the Trojan War. Hers was the face that launched a thousand [Greek] ships toward Troy. In this context, she represents the ideal of Classical beauty. 28. It was Berlioz who introduced Liszt to Goethes play, the first time the two composers met. 29. Boito wrote not only his own libretto for Mefistofele, but also the libretti for Verdis last two masterpieces, Otello and Falstaff. 30. Matthew Boyden, Opera: The Rough Guide (London: Rough Guides Ltd, 1997), 224. Boyden also points out that Busonis great Faust opera is not based upon Goethe, but upon popular sixteenth century puppet plays of the Faust myth, and the Elizabethan drama, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe. 31. Although Gounod also set the spinning scene for his Faust, it is often omitted in performance, and Gretchen is seated at her spinning wheel to sing Il tait un Roi de Thul. 32. In ancient geography, Thule was the name given to the northernmost regions of the world, lands of perpetual winter. 33. For these reasons, when reading Goethe in translation, especially the poems and plays, even the singer who doesnt read German very well can benefit from editions that include the original alongside the English. 34. Compare, for example, Schuberts Erlknig, with Loewes, Op. 1, No. 3.

SELECTED REFERENCES
Ancelet-Hustache, Jeanne. Goethe. Translated by Cecily Hastings. New York: Grove Press, 1960. Boyden, Matthew. Opera: The Rough Guide. London: Rough Guides Ltd, 1997. Brown, Maurice J. E. Schubert: A Critical Biography. New York: Da Capo Press, 1977. Capell, Richard. Schuberts Songs, 3rd ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 1973. Deutsch, Otto Erich, ed. Franz Schuberts Letters and Other Writings. Translated by Venetia Savil, with forward by Ernest Newman. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1970. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust. Translated and with an introduction by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Doubleday, 1961; reprint, 1990. ________. Collected Works. Vol. 1, Selected Poems. Edited by Christopher Middleton, with translations by Michael Hamburger, David Luke, Christopher Middleton, John Frederick Nims, Vernon Watkins. Cambridge, MA: Suhrkamp Verlag, 198389; reprint, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. ________. Collected Works. Vol. 9, Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship. Edited and translated by Eric A. Blackall in cooperation with Victor Lange. New York: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1989; reprint, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. ________. Collected Works. Vol. 11, The Sorrows of Young Werther/ Elective Affinities/Novella. Edited by David E. Wellbery. Translated by Victor Lange and Judith Ryan. New York: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1988; reprint, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Gray, Ronald. Goethe: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967. Hutchings, Arthur. Schubert. Revised ed. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd, 1973. J OU R NA L
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: A Primer for Singers

Larsen, Jens Peter, with Georg Feder. The New Grove Haydn. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1982. Longyear, Rey M. Nineteenth-century Romanticism in Music. Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969; reprints, 1973, 1988. Matthews, Denis. Beethoven. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd, 1985. Miller, Philip L. The Ring of Words. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963; reprint, 1966. Schubert, Franz. Songs to Texts by Goethe. Edited by Eusebius Mandyczewski. New York: Dover, 1979. Selden-Goth, Gisella, ed. Felix Mendelssohn: Letters. New York: Pantheon, 1945; reprint, New York: Vienna House, 1973. Smeed, John W. German Song and its Poetry. London: Croom Helm, 1987. Spaethling, Robert. Music and Mozart in the Life of Goethe. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1987. Stein, Jack M. Poems and Music in the German Lied from Gluck to Hugo Wolf. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. Whitton, Kenneth. Lieder: An Introduction to German Song. Foreword by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. London: Julia McRae, 1984. Williams, John R. The Life of Goethe: A Critical Biography. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1998. As a singer, baritone Gabriel Alfieri appears regularly in the greater Boston area with such groups as the Vox Consort, New England Light Opera, and the Longwood Opera Company. His writing has appeared in Classical Singer magazine and the poetry/poetics journal, The Impercipient. Mr. Alfieri also teachers singing at Providence College in Rhode Island.

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