The Beginning of Farewell: Saying Goodbye Through Painting and Music
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer born in Alsergrund, Vienna on January 31, 1797 during the early Romantic era of music. His father, Franz Theodore Schubert, started out as the humble son of a Moravian peasant, but went on to become a famous schoolmaster in Lichtental. His mother, Elisabeth Vietz, was the daughter of a Silesian master locksmith and worked as a housemaid in Vienna before marriage. As a child, Schubert received violin lessons from his father while his brother Ignaz taught him how to play the piano. At the age of seven, Schubert trained under Michael Holzer, organist and choirmaster of the local parish church in Lichtental. He also played the viola in their family string quartet. Schubert’s musicality was recognized in 1804 by Antonio Salieri, the leading musical authority in Vienna at the time. Schubert’s vocal talents earned him a choir scholarship at the Stadtkonvikt Imperial Seminary, where he was privately trained by Salieri in music theory and composition.
His exposure to the works of Mozart and Haydn, along with his occasional visits to the opera, gave him a strong foundation in music that helped him propel his own musical career forward. Schubert’s body of work includes seven complete symphonies (with one unfinished), hundreds of vocal arrangements, and a large repertoire of chamber and piano music. One of his greatest works is Winterreise, or Winter Journey, a collection of 24 poems by Wilhelm Muller set to a song cycle for piano and voice. Schubert died at the young age of 31 the year Winterreise was published. Though his popularity was limited to Viennese admirers during his lifetime, Schubert went on to become one of the most celebrated composers of the late Classical and early Romantic eras and is currently one of the most frequently performed composers from the 19th century.
Moritz Ludwig von Schwind was a painter from the same country and artistic era as Schubert, born on January 21, 1804. However, unlike Schubert, Schwind came from a sufficiently wealthy family. Despite this difference in social standing, Schwind became good friends with Schubert. After Schubert’s tragic death in 1828, Schwind decided to move to Munich. In 1834, he was commissioned to paint the walls of King Ludwig’s new palace. When he was not working on the wall paintings, he busied himself with illustrating the works of famous poets, earning him considerable recognition and employment. As his paintings were usually based on literature, he soon gained the title of “poet painter.” Schwind eventually became a universally acclaimed painter and went on to produce more exceptionally crafted paintings. One of his oil paintings, entitled Farewell at Dawn, was based on Gute Nacht, the first song of Schubert’s Winterreise song cycle. The painting was released in 1859 and is currently displayed at the Old National Gallery of Berlin.
Gute Nacht, which translates to “good night,” is a melancholic song following the story of a horn player leaving for another town after being rejected by his beloved. The song is in strophic form, meaning that the music sounds virtually the same for each verse. The lyrics are also repetitive in nature, with most of the lyrics sung twice before proceeding to the next line. In the first verse, the traveler narrates part of his story:
As a foreigner, I moved in, and as a foreigner still, I move out
The May favored me with many bouquets of flowers
The young woman spoke of love, the mother even of marriage
Now the world is so miserable, the path is covered with snow
The persona reveals that he came to town as a stranger and that he will leave it the same way. He also speaks of meeting a woman who made him believe that they had a future together. Without much explanation, he says he must leave the town and go on another journey. The music is in a minor key, emphasizing the sorrow felt by the persona. However, it is also set to a moderately fast tempo, probably indicative of the inevitability of this departure given he is a travelling musician. The lines are predominantly sung in a downward contour, evoking a general feeling of separation and longing. The pulsating eighth notes paint the image of someone plodding through the snow, possibly hesitant of continuing his departure.
I cannot choose the time for my travel
I must choose my own path in the darkness
The moonlight guides me as my companion
On snowy paths, I follow animal footprints
Why should I stay, when I am driven out?
Let angry dogs bark at their master’s house
The love loves to migrate, God has it so made
From one to the other, sweetheart, good night
The second verse seems to dwell on the loneliness felt by the persona, while the third verse shows his attempts in brushing off his emotions. The music briefly intensifies after the second verse but retreats into somberness after two lines. In the piano interlude after the third verse, Schubert modulates to a more optimistic major key. The text specifies that the persona wants to leave without waking up his beloved, but he plans to write “good night” on her gate to let her know that he is still thinking of her. The modulation hints that perhaps the persona is trying to be positive about his departure. However, towards the end of the song, Schubert returns to the original minor key.
I do not want to disturb your dream, it would be a pity
So that you would not hear my step, I will close the door quietly
As I leave, I will write on the gate, Good Night
With this, you will see that I have thought of you
Schwind’s Farewell at Dawn intelligently encapsulates the emotions evoked by the song. The painting emphasizes the image of nature and the emotions of the persona. The moonlight highlights the murkiness of the forest and the bright colors of the house contrast with the loneliness of what lies ahead. The persona is also shown looking reminiscently at the house, even though his body is facing towards the exit. In this sense, it can be said that the persona is both looking back and looking forward. Both the painting and the song “painted” the scene in their own ways, and both were effective in expressing the duality of emotions experienced by the persona. These traits are all characteristic of the Romanticism movement, both in the disciplines of music and the visual arts.
References:
Bowra, Maurice. The Romantic Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press, 1949.
Chisholm, Hugh. “Schwind, Moritz von.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1911.
Kren, Emil and Marx, Daniel. “Moritz von Schwind.” Web Gallery of Art. Accessed March 3,
2018. https://www.wga.hu/bio_m/s/schwind/biograph.html.
McKay, Elizabeth Norman. Franz Schubert: A Biography. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1996.
All photos were taken from Wikipedia commons under public domain