Schubert's Goethe Settings.(Historical and Analytical Studies)(Book Review)

Schubert's Goethe Settings. By Lorraine Byrne. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. [xix, 512 p. ISBN 0-7546-0695-3. $99.] Music examples, bibliography, index.

Although Franz Schubert's eighty-two musical settings of texts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe are widely known and highly esteemed, they remain misunderstood because of entrenched misconceptions about both composer and poet. So argues Lorraine Byrne, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Germanic Studies at Trinity College, Dublin, in her encyclopedic study Schubert's Goethe Settings. With "Gretchen am Spinnrade" (D. 118), Schubert first achieved fame as a lied composer, and he remained captivated by Goethe's verse throughout his life, eventually setting more texts by Goethe than by any other poet. Nevertheless, writers have often accused Schubert of lacking literary judgment and setting virtually any text to music, regardless of its poetic quality. Goethe's musical sensitivity and tastes have also met with criticism. Writers have claimed that Goethe showed limited understanding of music, reflected in his preference for the songs of Carl Friedrich Zelter and Johann Friedrich Reichardt to those of Schubert. These misconceptions about the composer's relation to poetry and the poet's relation to music, Byrne argues, have inhibited proper interpretation of Schubert's Goethe lieder, many of which count among his greatest masterworks.

Byrne believes that masterful song composition involves a unity of words and music. The musical setting does not transcend the poem, as some have posited. Rather, the composer translates poetic meaning into musical form. Musicologists, however, have shown a "lack of informed interest in Goethe's work, let alone his love of music, or his changing attitude toward the Lied" (p. xvii). They tend to slight the poetry, paying little heed to the "large-scale and coherent body of ideas that plays a crucial role in [Schubert's Goethe settings]" (p. xvii). Byrne thus devotes "pride of place" (p. xviii) to the poet. After two chapters on perceptions of Goethe and Schubert (part 1), she organizes her discussion of the individual songs (part 2) according to Goethe's literary genres and artistic phases, rather than Schubert's chronology. She also presents more extensive analyses of the individual poems than of their musical settings. Her aim is to right the balance between words and music, correcting the distorted understanding of Schubert's Goethe settings that has dominated the last two centuries of scholarship.

To a large degree, Byrne succeeds; her book presents a wealth of fascinating information about Goethe's poetic development, his understanding of word-music relationships, his interactions with composers, and the array of ideas and influences that informs his verse--a welcome contribution to lied studies. Still, her central arguments are sometimes less than persuasive, stemming in part from an inclination to defend the two artists at all costs.

Strengths and weaknesses of the book emerge in the first chapter ("Goethe the Musician?"). Byrne supports her claim that Goethe possessed a broad knowledge of music by detailing his extensive involvement with it. The poet grew up surrounded by music and studied several instruments, although he never became a skilled performer. His deep passion for music eventually took many forms. He cultivated friendships with Zelter, Johann Adam Hiller, and Felix Mendelssohn; engaged in probing discussions about music composition and theory; organized a Hausgesangsverein and sang in the weekly performances; delved into the repertories of German folk song and Italian church music; arranged for hundreds of operatic performances at the Weimar theater; investigated the history of music; and explored the subject of music in his fictional, poetic, and theoretical writings. Byrne convincingly shows that Goethe was intimately acquainted with numerous facets of music.

She stumbles, however, when defending Goethe against charges that he showed a lack of judgment in disregarding Schubert's genius. Take, for example, her discussion of Schubert's two unsuccessful attempts to interest Goethe in his music. In April 1816, Schubert's close friend Joseph von Spaun sent the poet a selection of Schubert's finest Goethe settings, but the manuscript was returned unopened with no reply. In June 1825, Schubert sent the poet three more settings; Goethe noted receipt of the songs in his diary, but again sent no response. Byrne downplays Goethe's failure to respond to Schubert, but her basis for doing so is purely speculative. Goethe's silence in 1816, she asserts, likely resulted from a simple mistake: the package was probably overlooked and returned by Goethe's secretary. Byrne also presents other possible explanations, including various ...