![]() ![]() ![]() Cosy musical domesticity was the keynote of the Biedermeier epoch, and the musical celebration of family values, which was to reach its peak in the later Victorian era, had already begun. (Of course it is also true that Schubert lived in a largely bachelor milieu where male singers were more easily to be found than female.)īy 1840 there had clearly been a change of emphasis which was cultural as much as musical. ![]() In any case, in those years when the male quartet was still the commonly accepted form of vocal chamber music, there was little musical interaction between the sexes outside the theatre. It might have confused the issue for the essentially operatic configuration of the duet to have been introduced to the salon at a time when the composer’s Viennese audiences were just getting used to the more singular and intimate form embodying the idea of ‘less is more’. Perhaps this is because Schubert was too busy ‘inventing’ the Lied while establishing its independence from opera he proved just how rich and interesting a solo lied could be without enrolling an extra voice. It is clear from this that settings for two voices and piano were not regarded as ideal Schubertiad material – and this is a pretty reliable indication of the tastes in domestic music-making in Vienna during the 1820s. This does indicate, however, that the composer was always aware of the broader literary picture when it came to poems which were excerpted from larger works. In Book 2 Chapter 11 of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre Goethe refers to an ‘irregular duet’ between those unhappy characters Mignon and the Harper, and once again Schubert obliges – although it is worth noting that of his six settings of this lyric (the celebrated Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt) this is the only duet. In Act IV Scene 2 of his play Friedrich der Streitbare Collin calls for the distant sound of a male voice, then a female voice, and finally the two voices combined Schubert’s gently melodious composition complies exactly with this specification. In both cases the composer was clearly inspired by the authors’ own specific instructions. In fact, outside the relatively unknown operas, there are only two real Schubert duets, that is to say works where two voices combine (as opposed to sharing a text in narrative fashion): Licht und Liebe (Matthäus von Collin) and Mignon und der Harfner (Goethe). When one looks at the work list of Franz Schubert one searches in vain for a sumptuous array of piano-accompanied songs for two voices. This development dates from 1849 (as do the Op 78 duets which end this disc), but Schumann’s interest in combining the male and the female voice in the important duets of Op 34 is one of the many exciting aspects of that great song year, 1840. In Volume 6 of this series we have already examined Schumann’s virtual invention of the song-cycle for four voices (SATB) – a form which enabled the composer to mix solos and duets with quartets. In welcoming the dramatic implications of a text shared between two singers (while avoiding the operatic exaggerations which might overwhelm intimacy and delicacy) he gave this form a new life with music both exciting and touching. One of the areas in which he made real innovations is in that enchanting sub-section of the genre, the vocal duet. That Robert Schumann expanded the horizons of the lied is without question it is this, after all, which marks him out as the natural successor to Franz Schubert. ![]()
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