Kunstlied is the perfect synthesis between words and music.  In my eyes
both are equally important:  the actual words inspired the music and the
music adds decisively to the words, often turning banal poems into works
of great depth.  That is why I am so intensely interested in thoroughly
interpreting and analyzing the Lieder texts as I will do beginning on
this list with a series of posts on the Winterreise texts on November 1.
Here, as a starter, are some comments from famous Schubertians about the
importance of the texts for their work.  All excerpts are taken from a
highly recommendable book presenting interviews with singers and pianists
(Sabine Naeher:  Das Schubert-Lied und seine Interpreten.  Stuttgart /
Weimar 1996).  Translation (and mistakes, alas) are by me.

Olaf Baer:
Germanists maybe wouldn't say that Schubert always had a lucky touch when
he chose his texts - I think this is unjustified, because then you have to
doubt Schubert's quality and his music teaches us otherwise.  You cannot
compose good music to a horrible text so the texts weren't horrible to him.
If you occupy yourself just a little bit with the texts - without being too
germanistic - then you can interpret texts very well which may no longer
be of current interest.  We have to consider that the German language gets
continually poorer, not only by the many Americanisms.  More and more words
get lost - and thus possibilities to differentiate.  Take a word like
"toericht" - a wonderful word to avoid plainly saying "you are stupid":  it
expresses a certain naivety without being offensive.  It can be found in a
lot of poems but nobody uses it today.  So the production of these Lieder
adds to keeping such words in our memory - and protects a linguistic wealth
which would get lost without it.

Barbara Bonney:
I think you cannot sing poems when the language they are written in means
nothing to you.  If I was asked to sing something in Russian I would
refuse.  A purely phonetic rendering is ridiculous - and has nothing to
do with interpretation.  You have to have a clear idea about what a text
means, more:  what every single word means.  Out of this text you have to
develop scenes and images you see before you.  It is not enough just to
pronounce a word without feeling the whole meaning of it.  [...] I learn
a new Lied by learning the text by heart like a poem, as if I wanted to
recite it like an actor.  Without the music in the beginning!  First I want
to internalize the tone of voice, to wholly acquaint myself with it - to
discover all the shades of the language used.  Then comes the music - and
I've got my interpretation!  Nobody has to tell me then how I have to sing
this Lied, where I have to breathe, where I have to add or slow down the
tempo - all this comes from the meaning of the text.  That is my way to do
it and I do not lose my thread by being told how Elisabeth Schwarzkopf or
whoever did this or that.  In my opinion every singer should develop a very
original idea of the Lied he or she sings.  The text is the key.  At the
moment I am working at Schumann's Frauenliebe und -leben.  Although the
text by Chamisso is far from our minds today and the women in his poems act
obsequiously I can somehow understand the expressed feelings.  Thinking of
my husband I have similar feelings:  I want to live my life through his
life...  Maybe he wants to live his life through my life too, I don't know
- but I can understand the feeling in the text.  And the only chance to
interpret a Lied convincingly is to sympathize with the text.  I can only
accept mediocre texts when they form a new unity with the music.  Mahler
for example set a lot of poems to music which are not exactly world
literature.  But nevertheless the Lieder are powerful.

Brigitte Fassbaender:
Text and music have always been of the same value for me!  I have always
tried to sing good texts - because when a text means nothing to me I cannot
sing the Lied.  Be it as beautiful as can be!  I have to identify with the
text to sympathize with the Lied.  [...] For me the absolute respect for
the text, for every word and every punctuation mark comes first!  That
has something to do with the intellectual interpretation of the text -
otherwise I could easily sing nonsense texts.  And mostly the music's
meaning is the same as the text's:  the composer has grasped the text
so excellently that he interprets it congenially by setting it to music.
Hugo Wolf for example wasn't able to compose bad texts - they would have
made the music bad, too.  That was why he so cautiously chose his texts!
Schubert is a different case:  he composed a lot of mediocre texts by his
friends - but turned them into wonderful Lieder.  By the way, I think that
we all underestimate Wilhelm Mueller:  the texts of Winterreise and Schoene
Muellerin are wonderful!  [...] Fundamentally I am of the opionion that the
real great songs are always by real great poets.  Take Schubert's Goethe
Lieder, real works of genius.

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau:
For a Lied the text is of enourmous importance because the whole unity of
a Lied depends on the text.  The idea to the music stems from the word:
the first phrase very often is dictated by the rhythm and sound of the
first line of the poem.  The unity of atmosphere which every poetry of
quality contains - at least in the Goethe sense (and Goethe called his
poems Lieder!) - can be reached best in the Lied.  [...] Sometimes I began
working on a Lied by taking the composition first, sometimes by separating
words and music.  It depended on the works' characteristics.  When I work
on a Moerike composition by Wolf I cannot avoid beginning by analyzing the
poem intensely because Wolf did the same.  He recited the poems over and
over again till he had found the musical rendering he considered fitting.
But this is not the only reason I work like this with Wolf's Moerike Lieder
but because Moerike's poems are works who are already masterpieces without
the music.  So it is an advantage to have a look at the music with
comprehension of the words.  You have a totally different access to the
music this way.

Irwin Gage:
Would I produce a Lied whose text is far from my mind? To 95 percent:  no!
It is the text that decides.  The older I get the more important becomes
the poem.  Of course, there are are some Lieder which are works of genius
although the text can't stand alone as a poem.  Think of Schubert's Der
Wanderer:  "Ich komme vom Gebirge her...":  a very dreadful text - but one
of the most beautiful Lieder Schubert ever composed.

Thomas Hampson:
The text is the starting point.  It contains all the cultural, historical
and humanistic implications.  [...] Rarely I start with the composers:
mostly there are topics, texts that interest me - and then I look for
fitting compositions of them.  That means:  I approach music through the
back door.  [...] The human passions these texts speak of haven't changed
in the last centuries, more:  in the last two thousand years!  Only the
contexts change - and to detect exactly these changes is very instructive.
And finally it's a great comfort to learn that all the things that torment
us today are not actually new but have been experienced by all generations.
This insight gives me an idea of what it is about to be a human being - and
this is what art and especially Liedgesang is about.  Schubert didn't want
to write Lieder as parts of concert programs but he wanted to set human
experiences written as poems to music!  To sing a Lied for me is like
stopping our life's clock for a while - time to pause, to reflect about the
meaning of life, of our life.  That is the importance of Liedgesang for me.

Thomas Quasthoff:
Regarding Schubert text and music are a synthesis because in his works
there is a great symbioses between the two.  A Schubert Lied without the
piano is nothing.  That means:  both is very important!  Apart from some
early Strophenlieder I have scarcely any difficulties with the texts of
Schubert Lieder.  Loewe is a different case:  for my first CD some Loewe
Lieder were planned which I refused to sing because of the texts.  A singer
has to have this freedom.

Christine Schaefer:
The text is of the greatest importance.  There are really texts I do not
want to sing - especially some Strauss Lieder.  Only when the music is
absolutely excellent I can stand a mediocre text.  This is the case with
a lot of Brahms Lieder.

Andreas Schmidt:
There is the difficulty that poetry is a kind of literature that
deliberately hinders the access to its meaning.  I compare it with a
foreign language:  the poems of the Romantik use words a listener of today
is not used to.  The interpretation can be as interesting as it gets - it
will be boring if you do not understand the language.  That's the case
with the Lied:  we who live with it day by day do not feel this impediment
any more.  But the audience has yet to work their way into the Lieder's
language.  And it needs an incentive for it:  the Liedsaenger has to prove
over and over again that the things the texts deal with are still relevant
- that they can move and grasp the interpreter and listener of today as it
did the poet and the composer then.  The words have changed, but not the
contents.

Here is the last tiny bit of my post - an interesting statement by Mitsuko
Shirai and Hartmut Hoell, differing fundamentally from some other
interpreter's way of dealing with Lieder.

Mitsuko Shirai / Hartmut Hoell:
Shirai - When we look for new Lieder we directly take the Lied as Lied,
text and music connected.  We do not read the text as a poem as first.  We
deliberately save this for later when we already know the Lied.  After all
the composition already is the interpretation of the text by the composer
and it is this interpretation we want to know - the composer's idea of the
text is decisive.  We do not want to judge about the quality of the text
but for us only the new unity of text and music is what counts.  When
different composers set one and the same poem to music you get totally
different pieces - according to the composer's view of the text.  Hoell -
We only read the text in a printed version when we already know the Lied
thoroughly.  Sometimes we detect new aspects, then we subsequently look
for these in the composition - and possibly see the Lied in a new light
afterwards.  If you at first take the poem as such your own interpretation
of the text can hinder you in getting in contact with the composer's
intentions.  Since we are musicians that is not what we are interested in.

Have a Schubert kind of day,
Robert Peters
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