Title: Abend (Evening)
First line: Wie ist es denn, dass trub und schwer
Poet: Ludwig Tieck
D-number: 654
Date: beginning of 1819
Used recording: Martyn Hill, accompanied by Graham Johnson (The Hyperion
Schubert Edition Vol. 34: Schubert, 1817 - 1821, Track 12, 4:31)

Ludwig Tieck (1773 - 1853) is one of the most important figures in German
literature, namely in the Romantisch movement. He was born in Berlin and
died there. He studied theology, history and literature. When he lived
in Jena he was a friend of the Schlegel brothers, Novalis, Brentano,
Schelling and Fichte. Being a kind of nomad of the soul he lived in
Berlin, in Jena, near Frankfurt, in Munich, in Rome, in Florence, in
Vienna, in Prague, in London and in Dresden where he was responsible for
the productions of the court theatre. His flat in Dresden became a
literary salon. King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. invited him to Potsdam (another
case of moving out and in again) where he was counselor for the court
theatre. His production of A Midsummer Night's Dream was the start for
a new way of dealing with Shakespeare in Germany. At the end of his life
he was lonely and sick and more or less poor. A sad ending for a great
literary life: Tieck's name is closely connected with Shakespeare in
Germany, the classical German translation of Shakespeare is known as
"Schlegel-Tieck", a brillant though now somehow dated achievement. Tieck
wrote novels and fairy tales ("Puss-in-Boots" is still one of the favourite
German stories of all time), his "Schone Magelone" was set to music by
Brahms. Today most of Tieck's works are for the experts but besides his
fairy tales and some of his poems he is still important because of his
translations, not only of Shakespeare but also of Cervante's Don Quijote.
He was the one who invented the genres of the fairy tale novella and the
artist-novel, he created the Romantisch poetry of atmosphere (most famous
example: his poem "Waldeinsamkeit"), he was of the first who used the
literary concept of romanticist irony and he developed the form of the
historical novella in German literature. A giant.

And what is the result when two giants meet? In the case of D 645:
a fragment. But not a planned fragment like a lot of the Romantisch
literature (they saw the fragment as a symbol for life and art which are
fragments, too), no, a real fragment. At the beginning of 1819 Schubert
was interested in the poetry of the early Romantisch poets, he set
Schlegel and Novalis to music - and Tieck, but only once. The fragment
consists of 119 bars of the vocal line and snatches of right-hand piano
melody. The version I listened to was reconstructed by Mark Brown, the
producer of the Hyperion Schubert Edition. Thus the piano accompaniment
is not original Schubert but it sounds Schubertian and is unpretentious
and simple which rings true with most of the master's inventions.

"Abend" is the third of four Tieck poems which form a cycle called "Der
Besuch". (Guess the title's of the other three --- yes, "Morgen", "Mittag"
and "Nacht".) In the first two poems a man expects to meet the woman he
loves, in "Abend" it is clear that their love is over and in the last
poem the speaker finds consolation in watching the starlit sky.

"Abend" consists of five stanzas. The first stanza is one long desperate
question of four lines' length: Why do thing pass although the heart
restlessly expects and needs them? (Good question.) Stanza number two
states the fact that the lover, having just arrived, has to leave, feeling
dark sorrow. Lamenting goes on in stanza three: the speaker says that
he is given back to barren life (echoing the Romantisch concept of love
as a counter-world, more worthy than real life). This idea is presented
in more detail in the long stanza four: four lines for the paradise of
life, seven lines for the hell of living in the real world seen as a
kind of desert (paradoxically full of maddening crowds). The last stanza
is a last memory of the joy her touch gave him - but what remains of all
this is nothing but missing her loving. This reminds us of the Winterreisende
who, too, seems to exchange love for the beloved for desperate clinging
to the memory of love for the beloved. (Have you ever noticed that the
beloved vanishes in the last Lieder of Winterreise as if she isn't that
important anymore?)

How dos Schubert set this heartbreaking lament to music? Striking is
that the tempo and the key of the Lied change constantly. The first
stanza is in 3/4 and G minor, transporting brooding depression which
borders to protest. Than a change: the tonic major and 2/4. The speaker
now states his own case after stating a general plight, this makes him
more lively. 3/4 now and C major - the memory of happiness (of the light
of love, of her eyes) sounds happy, but the stanza ends with the melody
of the first stanza, the general depression. E flat major now, 3/8 -
happiness is muffled, lament is back again and stays till the very end.
The Lied leaves me unsatisfied. It is interesting but not convincing.
Is it the poem's fault or the music's fault that I remain untouched by
the lament, that I do not feel the emotions the music wants to transport?
I don't think that it's the fault of Martyn Hill (although he sounds
somehow wooden here, not very emotional) - the whole Lied is wooden and
more or less a construction not something really felt. The magic Schubert
touch, changing art into life, does not work here, we are told a lot of
well-expressed things about the pain of parting but the pain itself is
not there, maybe because the words themselves are already enough. Well,
maybe it's just me.

Robert