DAILY DOSE of BEETHOVEN (August 3, 2020)
It is often asserted that Beethoven's immediate successor Franz Schubert, invented the song cycle. Certainly Schubert and his successors, Schumann and Brahms, wrote some of the most beautiful song cycles ever composed. Schumann wrote that "lieder", or the art song, was the only area in which meaningful progress had taken place since Beethoven.
Yet, if we wish to find the origin of the phenomenon, we must again turn to Beethoven. He wrote two great and very different song cycles, this one—6 Leider, Op. 48 (Ft1), published in 1803, and his later 1816 masterpiece “An die Ferne Geliebte”.
THE LIED and GELLERT
The founding of the "Lied" or art song, seems to have sprung from the founding of a non-academic German poetry.
Christian Fürchtegott Gellert (4 July 1715 – 13 December 1769) was a professor of philosophy and poetry at the University of Leipzig during the last years that Johann Sebastian Bach was Cantor at the Thomaskirche (choir director at Saint Thomas' Church) in that city. He was an advocate of "natural theology": finding God in nature, science (Ft2), philosophy, and the Goodness of the Creator as expressed in the best qualities of humanity; rather than through an overemphasis on "revealed religion" and mysticism. He was loved by his students for his calm qualities of humility, generosity, modest piety and friendliness. He practiced what he preached, and strove to be a living example of God's goodness.
As a poet, he is seen as a founder of a new German school that led to Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller. He is credited with beginning the process of liberating German poetry from Gottsched's stifling rules of the French Academy, which followed Aristotle's arbitrary restrictions.
In 1757, Gellert published his "Sacred Odes and Songs," and suggested that they could be sung to traditional chorales (hymn tunes). His close friend, J.S. Bach's son, CPE Bach, thought that they deserved better (small wonder, his father was the master of elevating simple hymns). CPE Bach set all 54 of them to original music (though he re-ordered the poems). Although his settings are somewhat hymn-like, they may also be the foundation for a new form: "Lieder", or the "Art Song."
Beethoven's unique settings came from the same collection. In a way, they are also very simple and hymn-like (he knew CPE Bach's settings, which were very famous.) He solves the problem in a different way. The idea of a song cycle is to take a series of songs, and present them as an advance in ideas, as an advance in thinking. The change in the songs, is more important than any one song. To emphasize that process of change as primary, Beethoven found it necessary to limit himself to setting just the first verse of each of the poems.
SONG ONE: BITTEN- SUPPLICATION
It is quite useful to compare Beethoven to CPE Bach. Here is the text.
Song 1: Bitten (I ask of you)
Gott, deine Güte reicht so weit,
So weit die Wolken gehen;
Du krönst uns mit Barmherzigkeit,
Und eilst, uns beizustehen.
Herr, meine Burg, mein Fels, mein Hort,
Vernimm mein Flehn, merk auf mein Wort,
Denn ich will vor dir beten!
God, your goodness reaches so wide,
As far as the clouds go;
You crown us with mercy,
And hurry to help us.
Lord, my castle, my rock, my treasure,
Take my torch, remember my word,
For I will pray before you.
Please notice three things:
1. The poem does not address God's all-reaching power, but His universal goodness.
2. Thus, both CPE Bach and Beethoven do not shout "God" from the rooftops. They address him on friendly, familiar terms.
2. Both CPE Bach and Beethoven sing the fifth line mostly on a single note, while the underlying harmony changes. Beethoven takes this much further in song 2 of "An die Ferne Geliebte."
Here is CPE Bach's beautiful setting;
and here is Beethoven's:
Beethoven's is well-suited to be arranged as a four-voiced hymn for chorus. It works as an individual piece, but not as part of a cycle.
SONG 2: Die Liebe des Nächsten- Love of your Neighbour
We have just heard of God's all-encompassing goodness. Is love of your neighbour the obvious place to go next?
Die Liebe des Nächsten
So jemand spricht: Ich liebe Gott!
Und hasst doch seine Brüder,
Der treibt mit Gottes Wahrheit Spott
Und reisst sie ganz darnieder.
Gott ist die Lieb’, und will, dass ich
Den Nächsten liebe, gleich als mich.
Someone speaks: I love God,
And yet hates his brothers
He mocks God's truth
And tears it all down.
God is love and wants me to
Love my neighbor, as he loves me.
This idea comes both from the First Epistle of John, and the Gospel of John
From the First Epistle: 1 John 4:
[20] If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
[8] He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love.
From the Gospel: John 15:12 Jesus says:
“This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.”
Notice that John does not say that God is loving, or that love is God-like, but that God IS Love. The Greek word used for love is “agape”, the highest form of love: Love of God, and love of man in the image of God, the image of the Creator. Notice that Jesus condenses all previous commandments into "love one another, as I have loved you."
Why does Gellert need to write a poem? Could he not simply quote the Bible? A poet must recreate the idea in a new language. He must develop the idea so that we take it into our hearts anew. Shakespeare is said to be everywhere and nowhere religious. He never mentions Jesus or the Bible, but recreates some of the lessons in an expanded way. Portia's speech in the “Merchant of Venice” is a perfect example. It is a challenge: "Set religion aside for a minute. Is this true or not?"
Here is Beethoven's setting. He captures the most profound idea in such a simple way.
Almost a century later, Brahms took a similar approach in his “Four Serious Songs”. Although very different, both song cycles address the meaning of life. Brahms also found it necessary to move straight away in the second song to thinking about other people.
“I turned and looked at
All who suffer injustice under the sun;
And behold, there were tears of those
The wrongs suffered and had no comforter;”
Tomorrow, we come to the heart of the matter!
Ft 1: Some scholars would say that Op. 48 is not a song cycle, just a group of poems by Gellert, set to music. We disagree. Beethoven has an ordering principle in mind that does make it a song cycle.
Ft2 Like any idea, "Natural Theology" can be abused, as it was by the followers of Thomas Malthus to justify " natural selection", or survival of the fittest. That is not Gellert's idea at all.