Wilhelm Müller (October 7, 1794 – September 30, 1827)There are many topics that one might take up with the life and works of Franz Schubert, but a particular area caught my attention and piqued my curiosity recently, after reading a treatment of the compositional, redaction, and reception history of Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin (Op. 25, D. 795)--often translated as "the beautiful miller's daughter." Specifically, it was the author of the poems used by Schubert in creating of his song cycle, Wilhelm Müller, with whom I became interested.
One may have a general attraction to the compositional narratives and chronologies that exist among the great composers, but it is only natural that the attraction to such stories becomes heightened by those characters inhabiting the clever spaces of history. In the case of Müller, though, upon reading of his gradual profession of librarianship, I became intrigued (as a librarian myself) to dig a little deeper into the story surrounding this poet-bibliographer of yore, and examine the story of his kraft and the magnificent influence his own works had on Schubert's composition.
In a splendid little volume on the history of Die schöne Müllerin, music scholar Susan Youens recounts the story of Johann Ludwig Wilhelm Müller in some detail, including the poet's style and context of his writing. She writes that he was born in the provincial town of Dessau on the "river Mulde north of Leipzig," and that he was "the only surviving child of a poor tailor," (3). He later studied "philology, history, and literature at Berlin University in 1812-13." He traveled around Europe, and after returned home--as Youens writes "Although Müller would have preferred a post in Dresden, Berlin, or Leipzig, he settled in his home town after his return from Rome in December 1818 and there began a career as a librarian, teacher, editor, translator, critic, and poet." His studies at Berlin, mentioned above, were sponsored by the aristocrat Duke Leopold Friedrich of Anhalt-Dessau, and some eight years later, Müller would be granted employment from this same duke. As Youens notes, the duke "later gave Müller the post of ducal librarian in 1820 and appointed him Hofrat (privy councillor) in 1824."
The origin and development of Die schöne Müllerin can be found around his early travels to Italy, around 1816-17, and continues through the time of his appointment to the position of ducal librarian ~1819-20. His work was fostered by associations he held with other writers and poets--"a circle of friends," as Youens writes, "who met at the Bauhofstrasse home of the privy councillor Friedrich August von Staegemann (1763-1840), an amateur poet interested in old German traditions." The origin of the Die schöne Müllerin narrative came out of this context, where older stories and sung texts were interpreted by the group. Specifically, the idea of the "Liederspiel, or a narrative play in verse and song (a cross between a Singspiel and a song cycle invented by Johann Friedrich Reichardt as an attempt to reform the Singspiel), was a genre performed by professional theatrical companies and by Liederkreis societies and artistic salons in the early nineteenth century," (5). As Youens continues, "For their Liederspiel, the young poets of the Staegemann circle chose the venerable tale of a miller maid wooed by various suiters, a subject with numerous models in literature and music." Perhaps another version, as scholars point out, could have been an initial source for Schubert--and as Youens notes "Giovanni Paisiello's comic opera L'amor contrastato, o sia La bella molinara of 1788...had been very popular in Germany...in various German translations, some entitled Die schöne Müllerin; it was performed in 1822, and Schubert could possibly have heard it the year before he composed his song cycle...," (6).
But jumping forward to Müller's creation, which spanned several years, and was not completed till around July 1820, we find that the poet brought his work to friends for a reading around that time. The reception was mixed, with one fellow writer, Ludwig Tieck, noting his displeasure with the ending and its excessive length. Eventually edited and published, it was in 1822 when the good librarian-poet began to reach a suitable audience, as it was in that year that "the composer Bernhard Josef Klein (1793-1832) published his settings of six poems by Müller," (10) at which point several other composers, including Schubert would follow suit.
It appears that Müller actually never knew Schubert, and both men died around the same time. But this does not and should not take away from either the character of the poetry, or the great value of the combined musical product. Together, the poetry and the music convey a mixture of the wanderlust common in Romanticism, and the tensions found in that ethos.
As Youens writes "...Die schöne Müllerin is the poetic narration of romantic/Romantic passion, a myt Müller simultaneously celebrates and questions." "The miller of course does not recognize the nature of his soul-sickness, but Muller--who knew his medieval romances well and even began writing one himself in 1815, a romance based on the life of the twelfth-century troubadour Jaufre' Rudel--makes sure that the young man's every word and action betrays it," (33). This text, in some respects like the young life of Müller, reflects this sense of wandering and tension in its poetic subtitles: "Wandering" (Das Wandern) and the duality of Fernweh (Far-sickness) and Heimweh (Home-sickness), "Where to?" (Wohin?), and "Stop!" (Halt!), among others, (34).
There is in a way, much to be said about these ideas--and the movement of both human wandering and the wandering of the text, echoed in the poetry and the music. The wandering instilled in the poems of Müller and his Miller, reflect both the sense of Romanticism and its desire for wanderlust (even some proto-flaneury) AND for us in the contemporary setting, the wandering nature of our present "Traveling Schubert Society." The richness of this material nearly two centuries later gives us pause to reflect on the nature of wandering, wanderlust, and the dualistic tension of Fernweh and Heimweh, placing us somewhere in between, almost in the middle of wanting to be somewhere else, but also comfortably at home all at once. Perhaps we can achieve something amenable, individually and collectively, through the desiring of something new, while being familiar and comfortable in our traveling salons of the future.
Like the Staegemann circle, the Liederspiel, and the creative chamber groups of poets, artists, and musicians, of the 1810s and 1820s, there is much that can be fostered and achieved, and much to look forward to...whether you're a librarian or not!
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