Death in Winterreise: Musico-Poetic Associations in Schubert's Song Cycle

Winterreise

Part 1. Background

1 Genesis and Narrative of Winterreise

1.1. The Genesis of Winterreise

The genesis of both the poems and the music of Winterreise is complex and took place in several stages.¹ The poet Wilhelm Müller published the verses used in the cycle in three separate collections (table 1.1). The first twelve poems initially appeared in Urania: Taschenbuch auf das Jahr 1823. Susan Youens (1991, 22) has argued that Müller first considered these twelve as a complete and closed whole. Yet Müller published ten more poems, still in 1823, this time in Deutsche Blätter für Poesie, Litteratur, Kunst und Theatre. In 1824 these two sets appeared along with two additional poems (Die Post and Täuschung) in a publication called Gedichte aus den hinterlassenen Papieren eines reisenden Waldhornisten II. This was the first time the twenty-four poems were published together. In this third publication, Müller drastically changed the order of the poems. Hence, the overall course of the final cycle differs significantly from what would have happened if the first two publications had simply been conjoined and supplemented by the two added poems. Müller’s reasons for changing the order or for supplementing the original Urania poems in the first place are not known.²

Schubert composed Winterreise in two stages, and, accordingly, the cycle consists of two parts, first published separately. He apparently intended the first part, songs 1–12, as an independent whole. It is likely that Schubert first discovered only the twelve poems published in Urania and set these without knowing the other twelve. As table 1.1 indicates, the order of the first twelve songs of Winterreise corresponds exactly to that of the Urania poems. Both the manuscript of the first part and the engraver’s fair copy have the word Fine after the twelfth song, which supports the assertion that part 1 was originally intended as a closed cycle.³ In the first edition, the word Fine has been deleted. The autograph manuscript of part 1 is dated February 1827. As Robert Winter (1982, 241) has shown in his manuscript study, Schubert had the kind of paper used in the autograph of part 1 from September 1826 to May 1827; thus, this autograph must have been finished by May 1827 (an exception being the revision of Rückblick, which could not have been composed before June 1827).

Schubert apparently discovered the twenty-four poems published in Waldhornisten only after having completed part 1. As table 1.1 shows, he did not change the order of the first twelve songs as Müller had done with the poems, thereby keeping part 1 as in Müller’s original scheme. Schubert also preserved the order of the new poems as they appear in Waldhornisten, only he put them in sequence in part 2 instead of scattering them among the poems of part 1 as Müller had done. There is only one exception to Schubert’s adherence to Müller’s order: he reversed the positions of Die Nebensonnen and Mut.⁴ As a result, the overall narrative formed by Schubert’s Winterreise differs from that in Müller’s complete cycle in Waldhornisten.

Table 1.1. Order of the poems in Wilhelm Müller’s three publications and in Schubert’s cycle

The autograph manuscript of part 2 is a fair copy dated October 1827. Winter (1982, 248) has demonstrated that the songs were written on paper that Schubert used from October 1827 to April 1828. But since the autograph is a fair copy, Schubert must have composed the songs earlier, and sketches for Mut and Die Nebensonnen can be dated from June to September 1827, suggesting that Schubert was working on the songs of part 2 at that time (246, 248). The documentary evidence, then, supports the assertion that he began to work on part 2 (sketching it at least as early as June 1827) only after having completed part 1 (which was finished by May 1827).

Five of the songs appear in different keys in the first edition from those found in the autograph manuscript (see the last column of table 1.1). Youens has suggested that these transpositions might have been made at the request of the publisher, Tobias Haslinger, in order to avoid uncomfortably high pitches for the singer. The publisher might have feared that a high tessitura would reduce the market for the cycle (Youens 1991, 95–96).

The above-drafted genesis of Winterreise raises two questions important for our present concerns: Should Müller’s final ordering of the poems (as found in Waldhornisten) be taken into consideration in the overall narrative of Winterreise? Should the songs that were transposed be analyzed in the keys found in the manuscript or in the first edition?

As for the first question, since this study deals with Schubert’s Winterreise, it seems justifiable to discuss the narrative only as it appears in the song cycle. (This does not mean, of course, that the comparison of the two orderings would not be an interesting topic for a separate study.) The second question is more problematic. Scholars have not been unanimous in considering the relative merits of the two transpositions for the overall tonal scheme. Christopher Lewis (1988, 58–66) has an interpretation of the overall dynamic of the cycle that relies on the keys of the autograph, while Kurt von Fischer suggests that the keys in the first edition are better related to the text (Fischer’s view is discussed in Lewis 1988, 62). Youens (1991, 95–99), in turn, has suggested that the original keys might have had poetic implications for Schubert but that the transpositions too form an effective, if somewhat different, dramatic tonal plan. Finally, Anthony Newcomb has argued that the transpositions do not much change the overall effect of tonality in the cycle (1986, 169).

Here I will examine the songs in the keys of the first edition. Schubert helped to prepare the engraver’s copy of part 1, and he proofread part 2, so these are the final keys that he saw and evidently accepted. Moreover, we cannot know for sure what led to the transpositions, and the situation might even be different for different songs. In the autograph manuscript of part 1, Schubert (1989, 33) gave instructions to transpose Rast. I have not had the opportunity to study the original autograph, but judging from the facsimile edition (Schubert 1989), it appears that the ink in these instructions is the same as in some of the final changes and additions to the song. So it is at least conceivable that the idea of transposition was Schubert’s own, born at the same time as other final changes.⁵ The other two transposed songs from part 1 (Wasserflut and Einsamkeit) appear in the new keys only in the engraver’s copy.⁶ But even here the idea of transposition might have originated with Schubert. We know that he worked closely with the copyist when preparing the engraver’s copy. In her introduction to the facsimile edition, Youens has observed that "passages that differ markedly from the autograph appear in the Stichvorlage with no trace of correction [by Schubert]" (Schubert 1989, xvinl8). Thus, these alterations are not mistakes by the copyist but rather changes suggested by Schubert himself. Again, it is at least conceivable that Schubert had second thoughts about the keys and had these changed when the engraver’s copy was prepared. The situation is different in part 2. Here the manuscript contains transposition instructions in the hand of Tobias Haslinger, the publisher.

The circumstances are thus complex, and it is not possible to know Schubert’s thoughts on the situation. As a result, it is not clear whether the new keys should be handled the same in every case. For example, should the new key for Rast be used (since it has Schubert’s own instructions for transposition, possibly made during the final changes) while analyzing the other songs in the original keys? Or should the new keys be used in analyzing part 1 while opting for the original ones in part 2, since the instructions to transpose the songs are in the publisher’s hand? To avoid such questions, which are unanswerable given the current knowledge of Winterreise’s compositional history, I will use the keys in the first edition, which we know Schubert accepted, or at least knew about, as he prepared his work for publication.

Some associations among the songs will certainly be lost.⁷ For example, if Einsamkeit remains in the original D minor, it provides a firmer conclusion for part 1: the music returns to the key of the opening song, so that D minor frames part 1 and hence underlines its unity.⁸ But the transpositions also create new connections. For example, if Wasserflut is transposed into E minor, then songs 5, 6, and 7 form a tonally unified whole (all in E major or minor). In spite of such fluctuating connections, I do not believe that the keys of the five transposed songs are of primary importance for the overall course and unity of Winterreise. I will return to this issue in section 13.2, which discusses the large-scale harmonic organization of the second part of Winterreise.

1.2. Underlying Narrative in the Poems of Winterreise

Many scholars dealing with Winterreise have discussed the degree to which the poems form a unified plot or a thoroughgoing underlying narrative. The cycle is often compared to Die schöne Müllerin, and, by comparison, the poems of the earlier cycle seem to form a much clearer plot. There are also studies that completely deny any overarching trajectory in Winterreise. Cyrus Hamlin, for example, has suggested that the twenty four poems published by Wilhelm Müller that make up this cycle categorically resist and oppose any sense of narrative (1999, 116), while Charles Rosen has spoken about the reduction of narrative almost to zero (1995, 196). The commentators who deny any plotlike trajectory do not necessarily argue, however, that the cycle lacks unity. But this unity is seen to grow out of the inner sentiments of the protagonist rather than from outward actions.⁹ Thrasybulos G. Georgiades, for example, has suggested that Winterreise is governed throughout by only one theme, varied in different ways: the unhappy me, which is mirrored in nature (or some other factor: ‘Die Post,’ ‘Der Leiermann’); the innermost being, whose state is defined through its reflection in the outer: ‘My heart, in this brook do you now recognize your own image’ (‘Auf dem Flusse’), ‘My heart sees its own image painted in the sky’ (‘Der stürmische Morgen’) (1967, 359). Youens, in turn, has argued that Winterreise "is a monodrama, a predecessor of Expressionist interior monologues. In such works as . . . Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung, a single character investigates the labyrinth of her or his own psyche in search of self-knowledge, escape, or surcease from pain, a flight inward into the hothouse of imagination rather than outward into the real world" (1991, 51).

Table 1.2. Underlying narrative of Winterreise

Despite the sparseness of concrete goal-directed action, I suggest that the poetic cycle does have a kind of plot, albeit a vague one. This narrative consists only partly of actual events. The main unifying features occur in the protagonist’s inner world, as is also suggested in the comments quoted from Georgiades and Youens above. But I would argue that this inner world is not invariable throughout Winterreise. Rather, it changes during the cycle, and this change is related to one of the most pervasive features of the wanderer’s inner thoughts: the juxtaposition of reality and illusion. There are two fundamental forms of illusion in the poems: one is associated with the love that has been lost, while the other is associated with a longing for death. (Death may also be understood more generally to symbolize a state of peace wherein misery is no longer felt. I will return to this issue in section 2.3 and chapter 14.) The first illusion looks back to the past, while the second looks ahead to something the protagonist hopes to attain in the future. The cycle moves from the first illusion, which governs part 1, to the second illusion, which governs part 2.

Since there is a transformation from the first illusion to the second, there is also narrative activity, clarified in table 1.2. This underlying narrative consists of two states and a movement from the first state to the second. In both, the protagonist tries to reach something that he ultimately cannot attain and that therefore remains an illusion; in the first state, he looks back to the lost beloved, while in the second state, he looks ahead to death, for which he longs. Both states portray a situation that is unpleasant for the narrator, since he cannot have the object for which he yearns. The protagonist’s temporal perspective on these two forms of illusion (love and death) is always the present moment in his journey. With some brief and fleeting exceptions, the wanderer knows that the illusion he contemplates and longs for is not, and cannot be, real. This knowledge makes his longing even more desperate.

Individual poems by no means elaborate on this underlying narrative (a shift from looking back to the lost love to looking ahead to the hoped-for death) consistently enough to form an unequivocal, linear trajectory that spans the cycle. In this sense I agree with the scholars referred to above who state that Winterreise has no clear narrative. Yet I would like to suggest that the cycle can be loosely divided into connected groups of poems and that these groups consistently elaborate on the underlying narrative shown in table 1.2. Here I offer a tentative division of the poems into thematic groups, based on the texts alone, without taking the music into consideration. In chapter 13, which examines cyclical aspects of part 2 of Winterreise, I will also discuss the overall organization from the musico-poetic perspective and, more formally, the foundations of my proposed textual narrative.

I divide the poems into nine units, based on thematic factors. The units are not equal in length: some include as many as five poems, while others consist of only one. Several of the units include poems that contrast with others in their group, thereby challenging the cohesion of the units. In such instances the unity is suggested by the larger context: the thematic contrast among contiguous units speaks for the unity within the intervening group. Occasionally, some poems that contrast with their own unit might, from the perspective of content alone, be better suited to some other group. I will not, however, assemble nonadjacent poems belonging to different units. In other words, my division is based only on thematic links between contiguous poems, or groups of poems (a syntagmatic perspective), rather than on general thematic associations that do not take the poems’ location in the cycle into account (a paradigmatic perspective).¹⁰ Since here my aim is to indicate how the underlying narrative shown in table 1.2 is elaborated upon in individual poems, the syntagmatic perspective seems justified. I will, however, comment on associations among the groups, since these, of course, form an important strand in the cycle.¹¹

1. Departure (Poems 1–5)

In this group, the wanderer begins his journey. He leaves the town where his beloved lives, explaining the reasons for his departure. This group is unified by references to places and objects associated with the beloved: in Gute Nacht the speaker leaves her house and walks past its gate; in Die Wetterfahne he looks at the weather vane on the roof of the beloved’s house; in Erstarrung he looks at the meadow where they walked in the summer; and in Der Lindenbaum he walks past a linden tree in whose shade he spent happy times in the past. In each of these poems, the concrete references are juxtaposed with comments on the speaker’s present inner state, the misery resulting from the loss of love. The recollection of past happiness represents illusion; the present misery is reality.

Two poems of this first group deserve further comment. The third poem, Gefrorne Tränen, differs from the others in this group because there are no references to concrete factors associated with the beloved. Rather, the narrator emphasizes his emotions and the strong contrast between his intense feelings and the cold winter. Gefrorne Tränen can thus be understood as an outpouring of the wanderer’s inner sentiments, irrespective of the concrete associations in the surrounding poems. This poem stresses underlying unhappiness rather than the act of departing. The other poem deserving special mention is Der Lindenbaum. Here the narrator makes the first choice in the cycle (the decision to depart had been made before the opening poem): he chooses to continue the journey instead of seeking rest, or death, in the shadow of the linden tree. Thus, the protagonist consciously chooses his journey with all of its miseries.

2. The Continuation of the Journey and the Outpouring of Misery (Poems 6–9)

Once the choice to continue the journey has been made in Der Lindenbaum, references to specific things associated with the beloved cease. The narrator is already far from the town (as suggested at the end of Der Lindenbaum and in the final stanza of Wasserflut). Now that he has left his beloved and the town behind and is without tangible reminders of the past, he can concentrate on his feelings, the misery resulting from losing the beloved. He compares these sentiments with the outer reality and nature, a comparison already made in Gefrorne Tränen. Thus, there is a thematic association between the first two groups. In Irrlicht the wanderer has lost his way while following the will-o’-the-wisp. But he cares little whether or not he finds the way, stating that his only consolation is that all misery will end in death. This poem could be understood as a description of fatigue, primarily mental (following the depressing emotions of the previous poems) but also physical (the long journey without interruption): the wanderer is too tired to grasp reality and instead follows the will-o’-the-wisp—an illusion.

The eighth poem, Rückblick, differs from the others in this group, thematically being associated with the poems of the first group. Here the speaker again makes clear associations with things connected to his beloved, specifically, the town where she lives. The poem would seem to contradict the chronology of events. But this contradiction is justified by the song’s title, Backward Glance. Moreover, Rückblick has a clear function in this second group. On the one hand, the poem’s final stanza shows that the option of turning back is still in the narrator’s mind; at least implicitly, his love and the vain hope of regaining it linger on. The cycle’s first form of illusion, the lost love, is again stressed. On the other hand, the rush away from town sets up the fatigue in the subsequent Irrlicht.

3. Rest and Dreams (Poems 10–11)

The fatigue intimated in Irrlicht is made explicit in Rast when the speaker says that he realizes how tired he is only when he stops to rest. The weariness of Irrlicht was indeed only implied: the protagonist was too tired even to notice, and hence, Rast retrospectively justifies the above interpretation of Irrlicht. In Frühlingstraum the protagonist falls asleep, dreaming of spring and love, the illusions that prevail in the preceding poems. When he awakens, these dreams are abruptly juxtaposed with reality. This direct juxtaposition of loss of love and past happiness, or winter and spring, sums up the opposition of reality and illusion expressed in the preceding poems.

4. The Journey Continues: Deep Depression (Poem 12)

After the remainder of the third thematic group, the journey continues. The narrator sees no consolation and simply goes on walking. Part 1 of Winterreise thus ends in deep depression whose reasons are clearly recalled and encapsulated in the preceding poem, Frühlingstraum. It seems that the protagonist no longer contemplates regaining lost happiness, which was abandoned for good in Frühlingstraum. Rather, he simply wants to feel less miserable, to arrive at a more peaceful state of mind.

Part 1 of Winterreise thus forms a clear narrative, which stems from the chronology, the events, the environment, and the protagonist’s emotions. The situation is different in part 2. Here the narrative is somewhat more abstract, based less on chronology and actual events. Moreover, the cohesion of the poems is not as strong as in part 1. Yet I believe that an overarching course can also be described for part 2.

5. Continuation and Back References (Poem 13)

The function of Die Post in the overall course of Winterreise is quite problematic. As discussed in section 1.1, the poem was added only in the third of Müller’s publications; it did not appear in the Deutsche Blätter, which includes ten of the twelve poems of Winterreise’s part 2 in almost the same order as in Schubert’s cycle. In Waldhornisten Die Post is the sixth poem. In this position it clearly seems to underline the distance from the town mentioned at the end of the preceding poem, Der Lindenbaum. As the beginning of part 2, however, Die Post could be understood as having a different function. After the hopeless Einsamkeit, Die Post recalls elements mentioned in the earlier poems, which led to the depressing ending of part 1: the beloved (directly mentioned, incidentally, only once more after this, in Täuschung); the town where the beloved lives and its surroundings; and finally, the impossibility of regaining the past, symbolized in Die Post by the fact that the narrator receives no letter. In addition to recalling the previous events, this poem is the cycle’s last to represent clearly the first state of the underlying narrative, the one recalling lost love. Thus, it functions as a kind of mediator between the two states shown in table 1.2.

6. Death as a Positive Option (Poems 14–15)

With Der greise Kopf and Die Krähe, attention turns from meditation on the past to contemplation of the future (see table 1.2). Now death is mentioned as a positive option, something hoped for but not yet at hand. In Der greise Kopf the narrator wishes that he were old (death would be near), but this turns out to be an illusion. In Die Krähe a crow has been the protagonist’s companion throughout his journey, and he hopes that it is a symbol of death, accompanying him to the grave. These two poems are an important turning point in the cycle, transferring the emphasis on the first state, shown in table 1.2, to the second state. The protagonist now sees signs (his graying hair and the crow) that he interprets as being, or rather hopes them to be, references to death. Furthermore, Der greise Kopf and Die Krähe continue on from the state suggested at the end of the fourth unit, the last song of part 1 (Einsamkeit). There the protagonist wishes that he no longer would feel so miserable. The death mentioned in Der greise Kopf and Die Krähe can be understood as a state where such sadness is not felt.

7. Reflecting on the Idea of Death and Renouncing Love (Poems 16–19)

The seventh group is perhaps the most loosely connected in the cycle, and its interpretation as a unit is justified primarily by the larger context, the fact that it is framed by the first contemplation of death in the sixth group and the ultimate choice of death in the eighth. Before the protagonist can hope to reach the second state of the underlying narrative shown in table 1.2, he must abandon the first state altogether: he cannot hope to get the beloved back and at the same time want to die. As a result, he must stop yearning for past happiness. I argue that the seventh group describes this process of giving up these initial hopes. It gradually moves toward an acceptance of death, with the wanderer admitting that it is impossible for him to attain love. Accordingly, this group provides a context for the notion of death that emerged in the sixth group of poems.

Letzte Hoffnung, the first poem in the seventh group, supports this somewhat speculative reading. Here the protagonist must accept that all hope is gone, and at this point in Winterreise, lost hope would seem to refer clearly to past happiness. The same impression is conveyed by the next poem, Im Dorfe, where the narrator says that he is through with all dreams. In effect, there is no hope of regaining lost happiness; it is only an illusion. Täuschung underlines this idea by emphasizing that the beloved and her warm house are the wanderer’s delusions. The intervening Der stürmische Morgen may be interpreted as describing the wintry emotional coldness and the rather broken quality of the self that follow from giving up hope of love; the speaker would lose something fundamental to humanity, the capacity to love. Yet this unsettled coldness is ultimately preferable to misery. This reading of Der stürmische Morgen is supported by two direct references to poems in part 1: the emotional coldness in the last two stanzas of Erstarrung and the wildness of the storm as a kind of consolation in Einsamkeit.

8. The Choice of Death (Poem 20)

Der Wegweiser is one of the key poems in Winterreise. The sixth group presents death as a positive option, while in the seventh there is a gradual acceptance that loss of love is necessary for finding death or, more generally, peace of mind. In Der Wegweiser the narrator consciously chooses to seek death: he says that he must travel a road from which no one has returned.

9. The Inability to Find Death (Poems 21–24)

In the ninth and final group the protagonist would like to find the death he has chosen in Der Wegweiser, but this turns out to be impossible. In Das Wirtshaus he has arrived at a cemetery, but there is no place for him; in Die Nebensonnen he waits for the last of his three suns to set, as darkness will only arrive thereafter; and in Der Leiermann he would like to join the hurdy-gurdy man, who has lost all emotions and may be understood as a symbol of death, a state in which misery and pain—or any emotions—are no longer felt. The frustration of not being able to find the peaceful state spoken about in these poems is illustrated in Mut, a poem that follows the first unsuccessful attempt to find peace in Das Wirtshaus.

The ninth group represents the second state shown in table 1.2. Now the object of the protagonist’s hopes is death, but it eludes his grasp. Hence, death, like love, remains an illusion, providing a desperate end to a desperate journey.

To summarize the underlying narrative: first, the protagonist leaves town, noticing its tangible features and surroundings (poems 1–5). Once the town has been left behind, he contemplates his misery (poems 6–8). He grows weary (poem 9), a state he becomes aware of only when he stops to rest (poem 10), and he falls asleep (poem 11). On waking up, he again sees the reality that displaces his dreams (poem 11) and so continues on his hopeless journey (poem 12).¹² There are two poems that interfere with this narrative flow (Gefrorne Tränen and Rückblick), but these can be seen as having important functions in the overall narrative course, as suggested above. Part 1 then represents in its entirety the first state of table 1.2.

Part 2 opens by briefly recalling (in poem 13) this first state. Death is then mentioned as a positive option (poems 14–15). But in order to find death, the wanderer must first abandon the hope of regaining love (the first state in table 1.2), a question he now contemplates (poems 16–19). The choice of death, and as a result the abandonment of hope, is then made (poem 20). Poems 14–20 can be understood as representing the transformation (the double-lined arrow) shown in table 1.2. The protagonist is about to abandon his initial illusion, the hope of regaining love. The choice is difficult but is ultimately made in Der Wegweiser. (This choice can be understood as a counterpart to the wanderer’s decision not to seek death, which he makes in Der Lindenbaum.) The choice in Der Wegweiser is to leave love behind and opt for death, the second form of illusion. The choice leads to poems in which the narrator tries to find death or peace (poems 21–24). He is not successful, and even at the end, death too remains an illusion.

1.3. Death in the Overall Narrative of Winterreise

Because this study examines the function of death in Winterreise, the detailed analyses concentrate on songs 14–24, the settings in which the protagonist deals with his relationship to death. Accordingly, the emphasis is on the second part of the cycle, in which the wanderer looks ahead to his coming demise, rather than on songs in which he recalls the love he has lost. (In many instances, thoughts of both love and death are present, so a distinction is not always possible.) However, I will not examine all the songs in Winterreise referring to death. Before Der greise Kopf, the first song to be analyzed here, death is mentioned in two poems. In Der Lindenbaum (no. 5) the speaker hears the linden tree calling to him, promising peace, apparently in death. But the wanderer refuses to follow the call, instead continuing his journey through the cold and wind. In Irrlicht (no. 9) the protagonist observes that, just as every stream ultimately finds its way