Waggoner1
Amanda Waggoner
Senior Seminar
MUTH 490
Snyder
26 March 2017
Romantic Hysteria:
How ArtSongs and AriasPortrayed Heartbreak, Tragedy, and RomanticObsession
Love is a natural part of the human existence: people “fall in love”, stumbling upon connection after connection with different human beings; people “fall out of love”, ending relationships with each other, uncertain of the impacts and ramifications of newly being alone. Love is universal and every culture, continent, society and place around the world describes love differently. However, there are similar themes resounding in the diverse definitions of love: the beginnings of love, heartbreak/tragedy, and obsession.
Within these definitions, there are many ways to express the emotions that coincide with love. Some cultures showcase love through scientific algorithms, surveying people left-and-right, conducting experiments and displaying the results of their research. Other cultures express love through mass media: TV, movies, advertisements – all of these forms of media can be culturally subjective when choosing to discuss what love means. Yet, there is another universal tangent that depicts all forms of love – the arts. Music, art, and literature have had numerous time periods dedicated to the ideations of conceptualizing love in many stages. From the birth of the Italian Renaissance to the Impressionist Era to the Romantic Era – love is the main pillar behind each of these artistic movements.
The three stages of love that were listed above, (beginning, heartbreak, and obsession), come from analyzing both major literature and major musical pieces; love begins and ends in a predictable fashion: the newness and freshness of love can either continue, or go stale. It is a complex, but rational emotion. Throughout Europe and the Americas, giving love a setting in the musical and literal landscape provided many composers, poets, and authors alike a way to relate to their fans and peers. It also provided a link to outsource their major traumas and happiness associated to love. Many major art songs, Italian arias, operas, and orchestral arrangements were composed from poems and lyrical settings that discussed one of the stages of love.
In order to best research love in song and its development through time and culture, an analytical framework must be provided in order to compare and contrast this topic successfully. The art songs created by German composer, Franz Schubert, and French composer, Gabriel Fauré, were remarkably innovative and unique for their respective time periods. These composers created many different pieces each with differing themes, but Schubert’s Gretchen Am Spinnradeand Fauré’s Après un rêve used text setting and contrasting backgrounds to display love in two different ways through song. Conversely, American composer, Jake Heggie composed an entire modern songbook of love poems into music, but the standout song was I Shall Not Live in Vain. This piece exemplified love through text and musicality in a similar fashion to Schubert and Fauré. Another reason why these particular pieces yield the best context for analysis is because these pieces clearly display the stages of romantic hysteria, even though each piece was composed and written in different time periods, different geographic locations, and contain lyrical texts from writers of contrasting backgrounds.
Before further arguing which piece fits into which stage, an assertion that each stage of love in each song can be exemplified through its particular geographic culture can argued, as well; did German, French, or American ideations of love create the reasoning for why each piece was composed when it was?
According to a psychological survey by the University of Colorado, American love is considered to be “…more egalitarian notions that romance is [not correlated to] marriage compatibility, perhaps reflecting the high divorce rates in the U.S.”, and love is more realistic than idealized (Simmons et. al 331); that sentiment of American love is encapsulated through music, art, culture, etc. In France, love is considered idealistic and picturesque. In an essay that describes the gendering of the lute instrument in colonial France, there is an undercurrent of admiration and mystique applied to love-love can be shown through inanimate objects, thoughts, perspectives, beliefs, etc. (Zecher, 777) This particulararchetype of love expands on the belief that France is the home of love. Lastly, from the University of Colorado’s psychological survey, German love is “…more passionate…[many German subjects believed in committing to marriage]…even though they did not expect love to last forever” (Simmons et. al 331). The meaning behind each particular place and how love is determined provides contextual clues to why each composer chose to compose their pieces in the ways that they did. Perhaps, the mystifying quality of love being the ultimate goal of the French inspired Faure; the stoic practicality of Germany’s view on affection inspired Schubert’s music; and the realism of American love incited Heggie to write about love.
Before analyzing the pieces, it is important to study the lives of each individual composer in order to understand the context of each piece on a personal level. Beginning with American composer, Jake Heggie, who has been called by the Wall-Street Journal, “arguably the world’s most popular 21st-century opera and art song composer” (Biography, Heggie 1), specializes in focusing on music that emotes feelings and expressivity through voice and vocal dynamics. Born on March 31st, 1961, in West Palm Beach, FL, Heggie lived an interesting life studying music and Romantic poetry. According to his official biography from Heggie’s website (and copyrighted by Bent Pen Music), Heggie has composed several modern operas, Moby Dick, Dead Men Walking, and Three Decembers, which focus on human hardship, tragedy, and emotion. In a recent review of his opera Moby Dick, the reviewer goes on to discuss Heggie’s compositional style, in general, describing his arias, art-songs, and works as, “…neo-tonal harmonic…[reminiscent of famous composers] Debussy, Britten, Barber, and Glass….” (Erbright 141)
InA Comparative Analysis of Four Pieces by Jake Heggie, a dissertation by Kendra Allyn Lynch, during Heggie’s high school years in the seventies, his father committed suicide which impacted Heggie’s psyche and made him focus on music more. He sparked an interest in art songs and classical voice when he began to learn more about lyric setting and poetry through his first mentor, Ernst Bacon (Lynch 14). Then, his second mentor and piano teacher, Johana Harris, taught Heggie more about piano technique, musicianship, and “[making the piano more] human…[and] real…” During this timeframe Heggie and Harris fell in love and got married, although their pairing was deemed controversial (“…Heggie was only twenty-one, and Harris was seventy.”) (Lynch 15) Heggie was also grappling with his sexuality during this period-he was coming to terms with the realization that he was gay. However, Heggie and Harris remained married until her death in the mid-nineties.
The Faces of Love was a collection of pieces Heggie wrote in the late-nineties for famous sopranos such as, Renee Fleming, Kiri Te Kanawa, and Frederica Von Stade. I Shall Not Live in Vain is a trademark piece from the collection, sung by Renee Fleming, and Heggie described this piece-and the entire collection of the Faces of Love-to be inspired by his two previous mentors. His personal life also played a role in composing these works, as Heggie expressed his turmoil through art songs and compositions. (Lynch 18-19) Heggie claimed the Faces of Love was about: “…the different kinds of love we experience in our lives: romantic, sexual, desperate, maternal, paternal, fraternal; the love of a pet, the love of self, love of God, love of nature—all the different facets, the different faces of love…” (Lynch 18-19)
Lyrically, Heggie set many of pieces, (including the one being analyzed), to American poet Emily Dickinson’s poems.I Shall Not Live in Vainwas inspired by a poem called If I Can Stop one Heart from Breaking written by Dickinson. This poem is about “…charity and the necessity of kindness and good deeds; one’s life has value if any act of goodness has helped
another creature.” (Lynch 44) Heggie used Dickinson’s works because “he [was] drawn to ‘the timelessness and universality of it. It's so concise and there are so few words’.” (Lynch 44) Dickinson wrote this particular poem after a crisis of her Christian faith from an unrequited love. She obtained a newfound path in Transcendentalist thought. “Transcendentalism, with its unflinching faith in the worth of the individual and its reliance on the goodness of his nature, brought a full close to the doubt and pessimism of early Puritanism.” (Lynch - Russell Blankenship, American Literature as an Expression of the National Mind (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1958), 65.)
Musically, the piece reflects the feelings of love and inspiration found through the text. Harmonically, the piece stays in tonic without much variation; this is particularly interesting considering how tonic is “home” and is consonant – Heggie wanted to entice listeners to feel a sense of familiarity throughout the song. Love is a feeling that during its humble beginnings, invokes feelings of warmth, comfort, and safety – these are all feelings reminiscent of nostalgia and representations of home. There is not much harmonization or melodic changes throughout – it retains its sense of consonance throughout the piece, allowing the vocal lines to change context and meaning for the listener. The vocal lines remain in tonic; with the only real change in harmonic texture is the piece periodically changing from I (tonic) to I6 (tonic, first inversion) (see Figures 1 and 2 on page 11,‘Figures Page’). The overarching motive throughout the song are the words, “I shall not live in vain” – they are repeated with different dynamic levels and intensity as the song pans out. (Lynch 65) Also, according to Lynch,the text is sung twice in Heggie’s setting, “…suggesting first a searching for that which would bring meaning to life, followed by the realization that one has found meaning through even one simple act of kindness…” (Lynch 44) Heggie also described his works as “American”, and he wants his music to “sound American” through musical style, text, and framework. (Lynch 34)
This piece represents the beginning stages of romantic hysteria: falling in love/experiencing love. This stage is the stage that impacts people the most – the newfound feelings of wholeness and being complete when they find love. I Shall Not Live in Vaindictates through its structure that this love is an awakening, and the text asserts that it is also the speaker’s one purpose, or desire for living. As the piece flows from the words ‘I shall not live in vain’ being reiterated, it shifts into an tonic inversion (I6) towards cadential IV, providing more consonance when ‘or help one fainting robin’ is sung near the end of the song. This archetype of majesty when proclaiming the desire for love in this piece does not match the cultural assertions of what love is in American terms. From the study mentioned at the beginning of this analysis, love was deemed more realistic to American surveyors due to high divorce rates. Perhaps, Heggie composed this piece as an homage to the older American Romantic era, and as an ode to believing in the mystique of love even when Americans view love in a strict manner.
French composer, Gabriel Fauré, was a renowned composer of the mid-to-late 19th Century. Fauré was born on May 12th, 1845 in Pamiers, Midi-Pyrénées, in the south of France. He grew up in a musical family, learning to play piano and compose from famous Parisian teacher, Camille Saint-Saëns, and he also studied on how to become a church organist and choir master. In France and England, Fauré’s works were widely popular, but he struggled to gain recognition elsewhere until later in the 20th Century. His compositional transition “…has been described as linking the end of Romanticism with the modernism of the second quarter of the 20th century….” In the mid-eighteen-hundreds, during the height of his career, Fauré married “…Marie Fremiet, the daughter of a leading sculptor Emmanuel Fremiet.” The marriage was described as“…affectionate, but Marie became resentful of Fauré's frequent absences, his "horreur du domicile", and his love affairs, while she remained at home…” He was survived by two children, and later died on November 4th, 1924. His complex viewpoint of love was relayed into his musical affairs, changing the structure of Romanticism in art song. (Fauré biography 1, 2)
The text for Aprés un rêvecame from an eponymouslytitled poem by French romantic poet, Romain Bussine. Bussine was close friends with Fauré, and Fauré set many of Bussine’s works to music. Some of Bussine’s text was actually originally written in Italian, but was transliterated into French – Aprés un rêvewas one of these transliterated pieces. (Poems Without Frontiers, Bussine 1)The text describes a sense of longing, a change in the sense of love’s demands after its tender beginnings. It expresses heartbreak and the desire to yearn for something that the speaker has now lost, comparing this fleeting love to a dream.
Musically, according to musical analyst Albert Combrink, the piece has been described as “…he tender throbbing heartbeat that supports this free-floating beauty….” “Every chord changeeither has a unison with a note from the previous chord, or a chromatic shift of a Semi-tone… and this “…creates a physical sensation of clinging, or floating….” (Combrink 1) According to Dave Nant Performing Arts Company, associating with Pearson Learning Company, Fauré uses “…frequent small chromatic alterations in the accompaniment, which often produce secondary dominants….[To keep] with his highly refined aesthetic [of this piece].” From inspecting the piece further, the harmony stays with the vocal line, keeping in rhythm with the tonic of minor I (i), D minor. (See Figures 3 and 4on page 11, Figures Page)
The main stage of this piece is the beginning of a heartbreak, right before romantic obsession and rumination begins. The text woefully dictates sorrow, and the entire mood of the piece demonstrates this by pulling between major and minor keys to give the listener a sense of comfort within the sorrow. There is a representation of strong dynamic shifts throughout the piece in the vocal lines as the voice transitions between themes of dream-like anger, then acceptance. The beginning vocal texts, ‘dans un sommeil que charmait ton image’/‘tu m'appelais et je quittais la terre’/‘hélas! triste réveil des songes’, all begin forte and then transition to piano; these dynamic shifts relay to the listener that the speaker’s is grappling with their emotions. This piece matches the cultural rhetoric of French love: the heartbreak is being personified as a dream; it is idealized and becomes a metaphor for romance being something that is mystifying, and cannot be a captured or contained emotion.
Franz Schubert was born on January 31st, 1797 in Zukmantel, Austria. He had always had a love of music, however, most of his genius was “self-taught” (although it was speculated that he took lessons from his father, and other teachers, here-and-there). He composed his first song, entitled Hagar's Klage at the age of thirteen, written in 1811. He began composing “…sonatas, masses, songs, operas, and even symphonies; but few of these early compositions saw the light.” In 1815, around the age of sixteen, or seventeen, Schubert composed the “Erl King”, “…the most popular of all his songs.” During that same period of time, poets Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and TheodorKörner were popular and Schubert set their poems to music. (However, his most popular pieces came from Goethe’s works.) (Middle Years Bio, FranzPeterSchubert 4) Schubert was considered a Romantic composer, and one of the special features of his works was the concept of “programmaticism”, “…the belief that music should seek to suggest or overtly express extra-musical ideas taken from literature or painting….” (Blackbird Library) Programmatic music “…sought to express the tumult and excitement involved in hunting through the use of interjections on reiterated pitches…” and “…provided either descriptive titles or elaborate explanations of the meaning of their works…” (Blackbird Library) In the later years of Schubert’s life, he contracted syphilis, and eventually after being hospitalized for a period, it confined him to his bed. Schubert was known for having “…a vigorous, clandestine sexual life….” He never married, and he “…he associated with prostitutes and was [considered] a dark figure to many of his contemporaries….” (Final Illness and Death, FranzPeterSchubert 14) His lost his battle with syphilis at the age of thirty-one on November 19th, 1828.
The text for Gretchen am Spinnrade came from Goethe’s play Faust, the narrative being set from a young girl’s perspective and her longing for Faust. Goethe was inspired by Dr. Faustus, a character from 16th Century playwright, Christopher Marlowe (Analysis 1). Goethe’s life was riddled with many love affairs – the playwright and author had trouble staying faithful and committed to one partner, and had issues finding luck in love. These themes were highlighted in many of works, including Sturm und Drang, and especially, Faust. (Goethe biography, Brittanica 3)