Hoeckner, Paths Through Dichterliebe (19th-Century Music 2006)

Paths through Dichterliebe
Review by: Berthold Hoeckner

19th-Century Music, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Summer 2006), pp. 065-080
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65
BERTHOLD
HOECKNER
Paths through
Dichterliebe
19th-Century Music, XXX/1, pp. 6580. ISSN: 0148-2076, electronic ISSN 1533-8606. 2006 by the Regents of the Univer-
sity of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content
through the University of California Presss Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.
My thoughts about the relationship between the narrative
and tonal structure of Dichterliebe were rst inspired by
the unpublished paper The Dominant Relation as Meta-
phor in Schumanns Dichterliebe, which Jeff Nichols gave
at the 1993 annual meeting of the American Musicologi-
cal Society in Montreal, and whose basic idea has been
percolating for almost a decade of my teaching the cycle
in the classroom. Special thanks to Jeff Nichols, Richard
Cohn, Rufus Hallmark, Richard Kurth, and audiences at
the University of Notre Dame, the University of Oslo, and
the University of British Columbia for comments on ear-
lier versions of this article.
1
Translation adapted from Beate Julia Perrey, Schumanns
Dichterliebe and Early Romantic Poetics: Fragmentation
of Desire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002),
p. 88; and Heines Book of Songs, trans. Charles Godfrey
Leland (Philadelphia: F. Leypoldt, 1864), pp. 10405.
Paths through Dichterliebe
BERTHOLD HOECKNER
ARMESNDERBLUM
Contemplate poem no. 62 from Heines
Lyrisches Intermezzo, the collection from
which Schumann selected the poems of
Dichterliebe:
Am Kreuzweg wird begraben
Wer selber brachte sich um;
Dort wchst eine blaue Blume,
Die Armesnderblum.
Am Kreuzweg stand ich und seufzte;
Die Nacht war kalt und stumm.
Im Mondenschein bewegte sich langsam
Die Armesnderblum.
(At the cross-road will be buried
He who killed himself;
There grows a blue ower,
The Poor-Sinners Flower.
I stood at the cross-road and sighed
The night was cold and mute.
By the light of the moon moved slowly
The Poor-Sinners Flower.)
1
Heine laments. Heine provokes. He associ-
ates the Armesnderblum with the Ur-symbol
of early Romanticismthe blue ower. It was
customary to bury those who took their own
life at the crossroads on the outskirts of a vil-
lage. Since the blue Wegwarte (chicory) com-
monly grows at the roadside in the temperate
European climate, it became the ower of the
In memoriam John Daverio
66
19
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MUSIC
poor sinner.
2
As a central symbol of Romanti-
cism, the blue ower became the archetype of
Romantic longing. In Novaliss novel Heinrich
von Ofterdingen the protagonist sees the ower
in a dream and sets out to nd it, and this
search leads him onto the road of self-recogni-
tion.
3
Heines Armesnderblum adds a bitter
taste to that quest. His second stanza casts a
morbid chill on the Romantic love affair with
the time between dusk and dawn, about which
Novalis sings so wonderfully in his Hymns to
the Night. If Romantic wandering can also end
badly, as in Schuberts and Mllers Winterreise,
Heine goes a step further, toward death and
suicide. Worse: his poor sinner is no less than
the Romantic poet himself. Heine even takes
pleasure in digging poetrys grave with poetrys
help. He drops the e at the end of Armes-
nderblum (instead of -blume) so that the word
not only echoes the act of killing oneself
(brachte sich um), but also mimics the gesture
of falling silent (bewegte sich stumm).
Amid such a bleak outlook, there is a glim-
mer of hope. Heines suicidal fantasy feeds upon
what it seeks to destroy. The last line of the
poem may stand for the death of Romantic
poetry, but it also becomes living proof of how
poetry may still grow from its own grave. This
paradox survives, as it were, within the Arme-
snderblum, as the most poetic word of the
poem. Its remaining ve syllables still animate,
beautifully, the closing line of the two stanzas.
Its masculine rhyme is softened by the sound
that prolongs the vowel in the last syllable: no
longer stumm, but -blum (as in bloom). The
Armesnderblum may symbolize the death of
Romantic poetry, but it is also a sign of its soul
still stirring. As such it holds the promise of
poetrys resurrection.
I will argue in this article that Schumann
must have been fascinated by this paradox,
which crystallizes in the last songs of the Heine
Liederkreis, op. 24 and Dichterliebe, op. 48.
4
Both cycles end with the wish to lay their Lieder
to rest, either by sealing them in a book (in op.
24) or by sinking them into the depths of the
sea (in op. 48). But both cycles also refuse to
close this way. The Lieder come alive again for
the reader who picks up the book; they re-
emerge from the cofn that cracks open. The
open ending of Dichterliebe, especially, has be-
come the opening of Pandoras box in the ana-
lytical reception of the cycle. At stake is no
less than the issue of the musics organic unity
as a premise for formal, or formalist, analysis.
Since the notion of unity in Dichterliebe has
been laid to rest in two recent studies by David
Ferris and Beate Perrey, I feel compelled to
revive it and advance a new case for a coherent
tonal structure of the cycle, through which
Schumann creates a meaningful narrative.
5
I do not intend to vindicate the aesthetics of
organicism or reinstate the paradigm of formal-
ism. Still, the very claim to have found a coher-
2
In German folklore, the Wegwarte (ward at the way) is
a symbol of delity and trust. It refers to the story of a
bride who turned into a ower while waiting at the road-
side for her bridegroom who has been killed on the battle-
eld. Another name is Veruchte Jungfer (cursed virgin),
which originates with the legend of a virgin who suffers
the same fate after having rudely rejected Jesus at her
doorstep. The two tales explain the contrary associations
of the Wegwarte: the rare white blossoms for good people,
the more common blue blossoms for bad ones. See C.
Rosenkranz, Die Panzen im Volksaberglauben (2nd edn.
Leipzig: G. Lang, 1896), p. 385; and Jacob Grimm, Andreas
Heusler, and Rudolf Hbner, Deutsche Rechtsaltertmer
(4th edn. Leipzig: Dieterich, 1899), vol. 2, p. 327.
3
On the circuitous journey as a mode of thought and a
mode of narration, see sections 4 and 5 in M. H. Abrams,
Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Ro-
mantic Literature (New York: Norton, 1971), pp. 197324.
4
For the Heine-Liederkreis, op. 24, see my Poets Love
and Composers Love, Music Theory Online 7.5 (2001).
5
David Ferris, Schumanns Eichendorff Liederkreis and the
Genre of the Romantic Cycle (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2000); and Perrey, Schumanns Dichterliebe.
Milestones in the practice of close integration of music
and poetry include: Edward T. Cone, The Composers Voice
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1974); Lawrence Kramer, Music and Poetry: The Nine-
teenth Century and After (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1984); Richard Kramer, Distant
Cycles: Schubert and the Conceiving of Song (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1994); Patrick McCreless,
Song Order in the Song Cycle: Schumanns Liederkreis,
op. 39, Music Analysis 5 (1986), 540. Reinhold Brink-
mann, Schumann und Eichendorff: Studien zum Lieder-
kreis Opus 39 (Munich: Edition Text + Kritik, 1997). Cone
turned his attention to Dichterliebe in his Poets Love or
Composers Love? in Music and Text: Critical Inquiries,
ed. Steven P. Scher (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992), pp. 17792.
67
BERTHOLD
HOECKNER
Paths through
Dichterliebe
ent musicopoetic structure in Dichterliebe as-
sumes that there is a secret to be solved and a
puzzle to be put together. This assumption
seems to ignore the premise of Romantic herme-
neutics that the meaning of an artwork cannot
be exhausted by a single interpretation or re-
duced to the authors intention. Worse, such
an assumption would retreat from a modern
hermeneutics of suspicion that unmasks the
formation of meaning as driven by readers (or
listeners) agendas. In light of such caveats, I
nd it prudent to turn for advice and inspira-
tion to Schumann himself, for he was a highly
self-conscious critic, whose writings reect his
experience as a composer and his knowledge of
performance.
Since Schumann worried that the dissection
of musical compositions would turn them into
dead bodies, he sought to reconcile his respect
for the living artwork with his keen interest in
compositional structure.
6
In his criticism, he
combined analytical and poetic modes in order
to remain close to the condition of making
music. As the rst major modern writer about
music, Schumann knew that both hermeneu-
tic analysis and performance involve feeling
and understanding; that both strive to be capti-
vating as well as plausible; and that interpre-
tive conviction is more likely to persuade an
audience than interpretive coercion. Hence I
acknowledge that demonstrations of structural
coherence, invocations of authorial intentions,
or connections to historical and social contexts
have no greater (and also no lesser) claim on
communicating some truth about a composi-
tion than music making itself. If the close par-
allel between analysis and Auffhrung informs
my interpretation of Dichterliebe, it is because
the cycle is as much a story about love as it is
about telling that story through song.
Fragment and Whole
David Ferris and Beate Perrey construct their
case against unity in Dichterliebe on three
counts: (1) previous analyses of the cycle were
based on the ideology of organicism; (2) the
publishing history of the cycle suggests an open
concept of the work; and (3) the musical struc-
ture embodies the Romantic aesthetics of the
fragment. Ferris ties these three points together
in passage from the introduction to his book:
[John] Daverios list of the three possible types of
cyclic coherencenarrative, tonal structure, and
motivic recurrenceencompasses the denitions of
virtually all the scholars who have written on the
song cycle in recent decades. In all three cases, co-
herence is understood as something that Schumann
has consciously and deliberately created, which is
immanent to the cycle in a denite form. According
to this model, our role as analysts is to uncover the
relationships that make the songs of the cycle co-
here and explain how the cycle is a complete whole,
and it is for this reason that studies that are based on
the premise of coherence are largely indistinguish-
able from those based on organic unity. I believe
that the notion of such denitive coherence in the
song cycle is chimerical and that any coherence that
we do perceive is more the result of the inevitable
relationships and similarities that we would expect
in a group of songs that set the same poets texts and
were composed at the same time.
There is evidence that as Schumann arranged
groups of songs into cycles he carefully considered
how to emphasize the relationships among them.
Schumann sometimes spent more time deciding on
the order and even on the contents of a cycle than he
spent composing the songs in the rst place. But the
fact that he typically began the process of arranging
the songs into a cycle after he nished composing
them and, even more important, so often changed
his mind as he engaged in this process makes it clear
how mutable the order and contents of his song
cycles are. The order of the songs in a published
cycle reects the aesthetic choices that Schumann
made as he considered how to convey the various
levels of poetic and musical meaning most effec-
tively, but this does not mean that he has created a
unied tonal structure or a consistent narrative dis-
course. On the contrary, the complete cycle is as
fragmentary and open-ended as the individual songs
of which it is comprised, and its ultimate coherence
and meaning are re-created anew by each individual
listener. Perhaps this is why the attempt to dene
the genre of the song cycle has been so maddening.
7
6
On Schumanns struggle with an aesthetics of musical
criticism and analysis, see Leon Plantinga, Schumann as
Critic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), pp. 59
78.
7
Ferris, Schumanns Eichendorff Liederkreis, pp. 2324; see
also pp. 16667. In his second chapter, Ferris deals with
the problems of an organicist reception of Dichterliebe,
68
19
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MUSIC
Suspicion about organic unity has been
around in musicology for a while. Joseph
Kerman argued this point a quarter of a century
ago precisely in regard to Schenkers analysis
of the second song of Dichterliebe.
8
There is
certainly nothing wrong with any ongoing vigi-
lance against musical analysis that nds unity
because it looks only for unity; and that looks
for unity because it assumes that unity is there.
To be sure: the perception of musical coher-
ence is always already implicated in ones mu-
sical training, which is itself already implicated
in ones musical aesthetics. We should recog-
nize that there is no way out of this conun-
drum. Yet Ferris feels the need to explain how
we can account for relationships that we do
hear in Schumanns song cycles, not because
we are looking for relationships, but because
these are jumping out at us.
Ferris explains the inevitable relationships
in these cycles as the result of the composer
setting poems by a single poet often in a matter
of days. Moreover, Schumann continued to
make what Ferris calls aesthetic choices
(what I take to be the composers intentions),
and the most striking of these choices were
made as Dichterliebe made it into print.
9
Be-
tween 24 May and 1 June of the Liederjahr
1840, Schumann selected and set twenty songs
from Heines Lyrisches Intermezzo. The next
day he offered them to Bote & Bock as Gedichte
von Heinrich Heine: 20 Lieder und Gesnge
aus dem lyrischen Intermezzo im Buche der
Lieder fr eine Singstimme und das Pianoforte
(henceforth 20 Lieder und Gesnge).
10
After the
publisher turned him down, Schumann waited
until 1843 to make another effort with Breitkopf
& Hrtel, and then with Bhme & Peters, who
accepted. At this point he took out four songs
and added the title Dichterliebe, which appeared
in 1844 as op. 48. If Schumann, by eliminating
four songs, made an aesthetic choice to con-
vey the various levels of poetic and musical
meaning most effectively, why does Ferris
deny that the composer created a unied tonal
structure or a consistent narrative discourse?
Before addressing this question, let me sum-
marize a similar argument by Perrey, who re-
lies on two hitherto unknown letters from the
publication history of op. 48. In the letter to
Bote & Bock from 2 June 1840, Schumann wrote
that he wanted to see the collection, which
forms a whole, appear unseparated.
11
And in a
letter to Breitkopf from 6 August 1843, he of-
fered a cycle of 20 songs, which form a whole,
but each of which is also self-contained.
12
In
light of Schumanns insistence on publishing
all twenty songs, Perrey maintains that the
relation of a presumably authoritative score
and its substantially divergent sketches may,
rather, be thought of as indicative of a compo-
sitional procedure that opposes, rather than
aims to achieve, systematic unity. The learned
urge to systematize, which seems so prevalent
in most enquiries into Dichterliebe, exhibits a
general and possibly excessive solicitude for
harmoniousness and, above all, coherence.
13
As Perrey puts it succinctly, Dichterliebe can
be viewed, I believe, as demonstrating the op-
posite of wholeness and still be aesthetically
entirely convincing.
14
Moreover, for Perrey,
the fact that Schumann cut four songs shows
that the original version was already a constel-
lation of fragments.
I nd this assertion problematic. Schumanns
responding in particular to Arthur Komars Schenker-in-
spired analysis in The Music of Dichterliebe: The Whole
and Its Parts, in Dichterliebe: An Authoritative Score;
Historical Background; Essays in Analysis; Views and
Comments, ed. Arthur Komar (New York: W. W. Norton,
1971), pp. 6394; and David Neumeyer, Organic Struc-
ture and the Song Cycle: Another Look at Schumanns
Dichterliebe, Music Theory Spectrum 4 (1982), 92105.
8
Joseph Kerman, How We Got into Analysis, and How to
Get Out, Critical Inquiry 7 (1980), 31131, see pp. 323
31. Recently the debate has ared up again, stirred by
Robert Morgans article The Concept of Unity and Musi-
cal Analysis, Music Analysis 22 (2003), 750, which was
met with a host of responses in the second and third
(double) issue of vol. 23 of Music Analysis.
9
Rufus Hallmark, The Genesis of Schumanns Dichterliebe:
A Source Study (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1979),
pp. 12327; and Perrey, Schumanns Dichterliebe, pp. 116
21.
10
For a facsimile of the autograph of the twenty-song ver-
sion with title page, see Robert Schumann, Dichterliebe
Opus 48: Liederkreis aus Heinrich Heines Buch Der Lieder:
Faksimile nach dem Autograph in der Staatsbibliothek
zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz, ed. Elisabeth Schmierer
(Laaber: Laaber, 2006).
11
Perrey, Schumanns Dichterliebe, p. 117.
12
Ibid., p. 119.
13
Ibid., p. 121.
14
Ibid.
69
BERTHOLD
HOECKNER
Paths through
Dichterliebe
letters certainly conrm that the 20 Lieder und
Gesnge are a viable version. Yet it does not
follow that the edition letzter Hand consti-
tutes a compromise of his artistic vision, even
if the cuts might have been prompted by exter-
nal constraints.
15
Although we should regard
each version of the cycle on its own terms, the
comparison between the two offers some ex-
planations for Schumanns choices during the
publication process. I will discuss these choices
in greater detail later on, since Perreys argu-
ment against unity in Dichterliebe is less tex-
tual than aesthetic. Like Ferris, she holds that
the work exemplies the idea of disunity, itself
based on the Romantic aesthetics of the frag-
ment. Both authors nd disunity because they
look for disunity, and they look for disunity
because they assume that disunity is there.
Most compelling in this respect is Perreys
reading of Heines Lyrisches Intermezzo as a
signature of modernity.
16
Heine debunked the
romanticizing view of Romanticism in favor of
its modernist traits. His critique reached back
to the roots of Romanticism, turning such lines
from Goethes Sesenheimer Lieder as In deinen
Kssen welche Wonne! into In den Kssen
welche Lge!
17
Such ironic twists questioned
the aesthetic premise of Erlebnislyrik as an
authentic expression of human experience.
Heine distrusted any claims on poetic truth as
a way of life and as a way of apprehending the
world. His parodies were not only an indict-
ment of Romantic poetry but also aimed at its
very corethe Volkston. While Achim von
Arnim and Clemens Brentano had collected
the folk songs of Des Knaben Wunderhorn
(1805) [to] heal the great rupture of the world,
Heines monumental Buch der Lieder (1827)
sought to reopen this very rupture.
18
He mas-
tered the form of the folk songits four-verse
stanzas with three-feet linesin order to un-
mask how urban literati had fancied this Ur-
melody as an authentic expression of the Ger-
man language and soul. Heine had to embrace
the tone and the lore of the folk in order to
shun its romanticizing appropriation.
According to Perrey, Heines Die Roman-
tische Schule (1833) not only contains a mor-
dant pronouncement against Romanticisms in-
tegrity, but also discloses at the same time
an afnity, and even an identication, with a
movement that he polemically rejects.
19
The
poet did this most effectively through his de-
vice of the Stimmungsbruch (the breaking of
mood), which Adorno described famously as
Heines wound.
20
And this wound was self-
inicted. The blows Heine thrust at poetry hit
home, heavily. As a result of this division, the
poets mtier became a melancholic pastime.
In Freuds sense, Heines self-hatred and self-
destruction are symptoms of the poets ongo-
ing struggle to overcome his inability to mourn
the death of poetry at the crossroads of Roman-
ticism and modernism. The fruit of this struggle
is the Armesnderblum.
Such emphasis on Heines modernism is ul-
timately a critical intervention into the pre-
vailing musicology of the Lied. It inicts, as it
were, a wound upon the traditional reception
of Dichterliebe as a paradigm of Romantic song,
in which music shapes the meaning of the po-
etry. Instead of reading Heine in terms of
Schumann, we are asked to listen to Schumann
in terms of Heine. This inversion precipitates
the shift from a Romantic hermeneutics to a
modern one. Perrey is no longer interested in
the hermeneutics of congeniality, identica-
tion and intentionality, which deals with a cen-
tral subject and a single meaning. Instead, she
promotes a hermeneutics of alienation, con-
ict and difference, which deals in decentered
subjects and multiple meanings. Hence her fo-
cus on the modernist seeds in those categories
of Romantic aesthetics that speak of disunity:
fragmentation, irony, and reection. And hence
15
For a recent assessment of the different versions, see
Gerd Nauhaus, DichterliebeUnd Kein Ende, in Das
letzte Wort der Kunst: Heinrich Heine und Robert Schu-
mann: zum 150. Todesjahr, ed. Joseph A. Kruse (Stuttgart
and Kassel: Metzler and Brenreiter, 2006), pp. 193206.
16
Part II of Perrey, Schumanns Dichterliebe, pp. 69107, is
entitled Heines Signature of Modernity: The Lyrisches
Intermezzo.
17
Ibid., p. 85.
18
Ibid., p. 81, citing Achim von Arnim and Clemens
Brentano, Von Volksliedern, in Des Knaben Wunderhorn:
Kritische Ausgabe, ed. Heinz Rlleke (Stuttgart: Reclam,
1987), p. 403.
19
Perrey, Schumanns Dichterliebe, p. 87.
20
Theodor W. Adorno, Die Wunde Heine, in Noten Zur
Literatur: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 11, ed. Rolf
Tiedemann (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997), pp. 95100.
70
19
TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
her musicopoetic analyses seek to demonstrate
that the songs of Dichterliebe are the very ex-
emplars of this fragmentation, irony, and re-
ection.
Symptomatic of this approach is Perreys
take on the rst song of Dichterliebe (Im
wunderschnen Monat Mai), which begins and
ends on the unresolved seventh of the domi-
nant seventh of F
minor, but cadences twice to

A major in the middle. Charles Rosen takes
this as a perfect example of Friedrich Schlegels
famous denition of the fragment as a little
work of art, complete in itself and separated
from the rest of the universe like a hedgehog.
21
Although Rosen suggests that the fragment
points beyond itself and projects into the uni-
verse precisely by the way it cuts itself off,
Perrey faults him for holding on to the Roman-
tic ideal of aphoristic completeness and organic
coherence. Instead she champions Maurice
Blanchots idea that fragments are destined
partly to the blank that separates them, thus
causing them to persist on account of their
incompletion.
22
This insistence on incom-
pletion inspires Perrey to argue that Im
wunderschnen Monat Mai does not have a
tonal center and that this lack is symptomatic
for the lack of tonal coherence in Dichterliebe
as a whole:
Sehnen und Verlangen as a sentiment paramount
to Romanticism has been seized structurally in its
purest manifestationthrough lack itselfin the
rst song of Dichterliebe. Without a tonal centre
and by forgoing formal closure, it widens the
wounded agony sensed in Heines Sehnen by
virtue of its fragmentary form. . . . Song 1 does not,
as has been assumed in previous studies, provide a
stable basis on which all other songs can rely, nor is
it forcibly connected to Song 2. Instead, it opens up
the structure of Dichterliebe into a constellation of
phantasmal dialogues.
23
But the rejection of organicist approaches
need not lead to throwing out the baby (some
form of tonal coherence in Dichterliebe) with
the bathwater (the prevailing paradigm of mu-
sical analysis). In a response to Perreys analy-
sis of Im wunderschnen Monat Mai,
Yonatan Malin has suggested that the repeated
A-major cadences present at least an illusion of
stability. For Malin, this illusion is in fact a
wonderful example of what Perrey herself calls
the fragmentation of desire. The poet subli-
mates his desire in images of springtime, in
what seems to be a stable A major. Desire then
destabilizes the key and creates fragmentation,
in the song and in the poetic self, as it re-
emerges at the end of each stanza.
24
The song,
in other words, uctuates between the illusion
of fulllment and actual fragmentation. I will
now try to show how this pertains to the entire
cycle.
Tonal and Narrative Paths
My point of departure is Fred Lerdahls analy-
sis of Dichterliebe in his book Tonal Pitch
Space. Lerdahl offers a graph of a regional
journey through the song cycle (see g. 1),
which he describes as follows:
The unit of analysis is the tonic of each song, and
there is no attempt to organize the sequence into a
prolongational hierarchy. Beginning in f
(the rst
song, Im wunderschnen Monat Mai, is ambigu-
ous between prolonging V/f
and I/A), the circle

moves back and forth within one fold of the space.
The sequence gradually descends down the fth axis
until, at Ich hab im Traum geweinet, it crosses
the seam to the adjacent fold [see shaded arrow in
g. 1] and then continues to descend until c
is
reached [see arrow in g. 1]. The cycle has come full
circle and in a sense could begin again, with the I of
the D
,
coda, pivoting as V/f
[see the shaded boxes

around A and f
]. It is tempting to ascribe narrative

signicance to this pattern, but Heines elusive po-
etry does not offer an easy interpretation. At the
least, the stark Ich hab im Traum geweinet sig-
nals a change in mood that conforms to the crossing
from one fold to the next.
25
21
See Perrey, Schumanns Dichterliebe, p. 174, citing
Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 48, citing
Schlegels fragment no. 206 from the journal Athenaeum.
22
As cited in Perrey, Schumanns Dichterliebe, p. 177; cf.
Rosen, The Romantic Generation, pp. 5157.
23
Perrey, Schumanns Dichterliebe, p. 224; see also p. 177.
24
Yonatan Malin, Review of Beate Julia Perrey,
Schumanns Dichterliebe and Early Romantic Poetics:
Fragmentation of Desire, Music Theory Spectrum 28.2
(2006), 302.
25
Fred Lerdahl, Tonal Pitch Space (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2001), p. 138.
71
BERTHOLD
HOECKNER
Paths through
Dichterliebe
F
F c
g A
A f
A f
D b
G e
C a
d
B g
e E
B
E c D
,
, ,
,
26
For further evidence of Schumanns engagement with
Weber, see Bodo Bischoff, Monument fr Beethoven: Die
Entwicklung der Beethoven-Rezeption Robert Schumanns
(Kln-Rheinkassel: C. Dohr, 1994), pp. 36993; see also
Hubert Moburger, Poetische Harmonik in der Musik Rob-
ert Schumanns (Sinzig: Studio, 2005), pp. 13940.
Lerdahls hermeneutic restraintor reluc-
tance to respond to Heines elusive poetry
leaves ample room for further exploration.
Lerdahl derives his regional journey of
Dichterliebe from the conception of key rela-
tionships in Gottfried Webers Versuch einer
geordneten Theorie der Tonkunst from 1817/
21 (see g. 2). Schumann notes in his diaries
that he studied the Versuch, so he was cer-
tainly familiar with Webers diagram.
26
Weber
combines the vertical orientation of fth rela-
tions in major and minor keys with the hori-
zontal orientation of minor third relations, as-
signing a node to each major and minor key.
The most prominent feature in the tonal struc-
ture of Dichterliebe is a double trajectory of
falling fths through major keys and their rela-
tive minor keys, starting with A major and F
minor in the rst song. This double trajectory

appears as a shaded box in the second column
27
Lerdahl, Tonal Pitch Space, chap. 3 and p. 140. About
the relationship between tonal and event space, see also
Patrick McCreless, Syntagmatics and Paradigmatics: Some
Implications for the Analysis of Chromaticism in Tonal
Music, Music Theory Spectrum 13 (1991), 14778.
Figure 1: Regional journey in Schumanns
Dichterliebe from Fred Lerdahl, Tonal Pitch
Space (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001),
p. 139, shadings added.
C a A f F d D b B g

F d D b B g G e E c

B g G e E c C a A f

,
E c C a A f F d D b

A f F d D b B g G e

D b B g G e E c C a

G e E c C a A f F d

C a A f F d D b B g
F d D b B g G e E c
B g G e E c C a A f
E c C a A f F d D b
A f F d D b B g G e
D b B g G e E c C a
,
,

, , ,

, , ,

, , ,
, , , , ,

, , ,

,
, , , ,
, , , , , ,
, , , ,
Figure 2: Table of key relationships
reproduced from Gottfried Weber,
Theory of Musical Composition, trans. James
F. Warner (Boston: Wilkins, Carter, and
Company, 1846), p. 320, shaded box added.
of my reproduction of Webers chart.
Lerdahls graph deviates from Webers re-
gional map in a number of ways that I will
address in due course. The most fundamental
and important aspect of Lerdahls appropria-
tion of Weber is that the key sequence of
Dichterliebe is not governed by a prolongational
hierarchy determined by a single tonic (which
was the main premise of Komars Schenkerian
analysis). As a result, Schumann transforms
tonal space into event space, where discrete
events are connected in real and directed time,
as in performance.
27
This actual sequence of
72
19
TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
events transforms the abstract relations of the
tonal space into the palpable progression of a
journey, whose processes, patterns, and rela-
tionships create the tonal and narrative paths
through Dichterliebe. These paths share two
essential properties: (1) the wavering between
two emotional states; and (2) the experience of
a growing spatial and temporal distance that
must be overcome. Of course, taking the tonic
of a song as a primary unit of analysis results in
a relatively global perspective on the cycle, but
the larger structure does relate to details within
the songs, some of which I will include in my
analysis.
Lerdahl follows the top-down orientation in
Webers grid, which suggests a spatial sense of
falling or descending through successive fths.
While the image of falling comes with a host of
powerful associations, I have changed this ori-
entation from left to right and put the relative
minor keys below the major keys (see g. 3).
This change of orientation offers additional
metaphorical possibilities, or in cognitive terms,
a different source for cross-domain mapping.
28
The most important gain is the intuitive link
between the horizontal orientation and the pass-
ing of time. This sense of temporal unfolding
helps to explore how the tonal progression of
the songs along the double trajectory might
have narrative signicance.
One of the questions often raised about
Dichterliebe is whether the cycle constitutes a
linear story or a nonlinear constellation of
changing emotional states, that is, whether the
order of songs follows the logic of the timeline
or the impulses of free association. What speaks
for a nonlinear constellation is the fortuitous
way in which memory can take recourse to
past events, often confusing them with the
Figure 3: Horizontal orientation of the double trajectory.
present. This confusion is symptomatic of the
mental condition of the speaker, who is dis-
traught with the loss of his beloved. But since a
performance of the cycle places the songs them-
selves in an unchanging temporal order, it will
be useful to distinguish between the story and
the telling of the story, or the narrative.
29
While
the events of the failed love affair belong to the
past that may be accessed at random, the tell-
ing of the story takes place in the present
through the performance of each song, one by
one. This timeline of storytelling is essential
for my analysis and will serve as its main guid-
ing principle. Such a guideline will be useful
precisely because the poet telling the story and
its protagonist are the same person, and it of-
ten appears as if the narrator is reliving and
reenacting the events of the past in the present.
In fact, this slippage between story and
storytelling in performance is a salient feature
of Dichterliebes alluring complexity.
Let us begin, then, with the group of the rst
four songs, starting with Im wunderschnen
Monat Mai, whose oft-noted tonal ambiguity
reects how the poets feelings for his beloved
uctuate between his hope for acceptance and
his fear of rejection. The cycle thus opens si-
multaneously on both strands of the major and
minor trajectory (as shown by the double-headed
arrow in g. 4). The fear voiced in the rst song
resolves in the second song, which ends on a
hopeful note in A major. Indeed, in the exuber-
ant third song, Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube,
die Sonne, everything seems well as the poet
exults in the carefree confession that he no
longer loves the rose, lily, dove, and sun, but
28
For an exemplary analysis of conceptual blending in a
single Lied, see Lawrence Zbikowski, The Blossoms of
Trockne Blumen: Music and Text in the Early Nineteenth
Century, Music Analysis 18 (1999), 30745.
29
Ferris, Schumanns Eichendorff Liederkreis, pp. 20408,
reviews this narratological distinction and takes issue with
analyses along those lines by Christopher Lewis, Text,
Time, and Tonic: Aspects of Patterning in the Romantic
Cycle, Intgral: The Journal of Applied Musical Thought
2 (1988), 3773 (at 4750); and Barbara Turchin, Robert
Schumanns Song Cycles: The Cycle within the Song,
this journal 8 (1985), 23144.
A D
f b
G
e
C
a
F
d
B
g
E
c
A
f
D
b
G
e
C
a
F
d
B
g
, , , , , , ,
, , , , ,
73
BERTHOLD
HOECKNER
Paths through
Dichterliebe
rage.
31
This inner struggle is indicative of a
growing emotional crisis, which is reected in
multiple crossings between the major and mi-
nor strands of the double trajectory, starting
after no. 4 and ending with the drop down to
no. 8 (see g. 5).
32
The poet is now consumed
by his angry and sad feelings, which push him
deeper into despair along the line of minor keys:
in A minor, D minor, and G minor. The eighth
song, Und wsstens die Blumen, bemoans
the beloveds ignorance about her heartbreak-
ing behavior and illustrates the actual breaking
of the heart in the last stanza. Here the nervous
uttering of thirty-second notes in the piano
ruptures, leading to an outburst in the postlude,
whose wildly angular sixteenth-note triplets
are reminiscent of the frantic opening of
Kreisleriana. The ninth song, Das ist ein Flten
und Geigen, picks up on the maddening drive
of these triplets as they turn into the poets
recall of the distorted dance music from the
beloveds wedding to another man. The per-
petual circling torments the poet, but the move-
ment eventually runs its course and leads to
the remembrance of the beloveds song, whose
memory triggers great grief in the tenth song,
Hr ich das Liedchen klingen. Thus, after
the three crossings during the moment of cri-
sis, the sequence of three songs in minor (ad
g) appears as the negative correlate of the ini-
tial series of songs in major (ADG), both with
respect to the mode change and to the narra-
30
These tears are qualitatively different than those in the
second song, which I read as the tears of potentialnot
actualdisappointment. For an analysis of the way
Schumann deals with the Stimmungsbruch, see V. Ko
Agawu, Structural Highpoints in Schumanns
Dichterliebe, Music Analysis 3 (1984), 15980.
A D G
f
Figure 4: The rst four songs.

only the little, dainty, and pure onehis love.
And yet, the happiest moment in Dichterliebe
is also the shortest.
The fourth song, Wenn ich in deine Augen
seh, ends with a paradigmatic case of Heines
Stimmungsbruch: when the beloved tells the
poet that she loves him, he must weep bit-
terly because he realizes that she is not telling
the truth.
30
Despite the break, the initial posi-
tive feeling is reason enough to place the song
within the opening progression through major
keys: ADG. The rst change to a song with a
minor tonic comes in the fth song, Ich will
meine Seele tauchen, in which the poet re-
members kissing his beloved in the past
(einst). This indicates that the relationship is
over and the memory of the kiss is tinged with
a lament for her loss. While no. 5 invokes tem-
poral distance, the sixth song (in E minor) dwells
on the experience of spatial distance. The poet
describes how the image of Cologne Cathedral
is reected in the waters of the Rhine, from
which his imagination moves inside the cathe-
dral to a painting of the Virgin Mary, whose
features remind him of his beloved. Because of
this sorrowful sense of temporal and spatial
distance, these two songs pick up the strand of
minor keys on the double trajectory implied in
the opening song of Dichterliebe.
The return to the trajectory of major keys
takes place with the seventh song, Ich grolle
nicht, in C major. This is an attempt by the
poet to convince himself that he does not hold
a grudge. But Edward Cone pointed out long
ago that Schumann amplies the two state-
ments of Ich grolle nicht in Heines poem by
repeating them six times in his songa sure
sign that the poet can barely control his out-
D G C
b e a
Figure 5: Multiple crossings between major
and minor trajectories as symptom of an
emotional crisis.
31
Edward T. Cone, Words into Music: The Composers
Approach to the Text, in Music, a View from Delft: Se-
lected Essays, ed. Robert P. Morgan (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 12122. The essay appeared
rst as chap. 1 of Sound and Poetry, ed. Northrup Frye
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), pp. 315.
The passage pertaining to Schumann is reprinted in Komar,
Dichterliebe: An Authoritative Score, pp. 11718.
32
Turchin sees the onset of a crisis only with no. 7. See n.
29 above.
74
19
TH
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MUSIC
Figure 6: Three songs in minor counteract
three songs in major.
D G C
b e a
A
f
d g
D G C
b e a
A
f
[F]
d
B
g
E
[c]
, ,
Tritone
1/2 3 4
1 5 6
7
8
12 11
9
10
Figure 7: Tritone distance
between no. 1 and no. 11.
beloved saying ich liebe dich also touches on
B on the rst syllable of lie-be.
The owers allusion has a bittersweet taste.
For the G major is soon inected toward G
minor, and then, via the German sixth, to the
dominant that sustains the drawn-out postlude
before it reaches the tonic B
,
major. Hence the
sense of closure in the postlude has an air of
ambivalence. On the one hand, it is a peaceful
response to the agonizing postlude of no. 10 in
G minor (its immediate neighbor on the strand
of minor keys). On the other hand, its way of
weaving a melody into soft arpeggios harps back
to the rst song of the cycle. Indeed, the mo-
ment of reprieve proposed by the owers and
the lingering sense of return and reconciliation
in the postlude turn out to be an illusion, for
Dichterliebe does not end here. There is some-
thing unreal about the way the song approaches
B
,
from without (the reversal on the major track)
and from within (through the German sixth).
As a song, no. 12 is like the ower song embed-
ded in it: a fantasy. Its sense of an ending merely
springs from the poets imagination. Closure is
wishful thinking, a daydream.
I will digress here in order to consider the
original 20 Lieder und Gesnge and speculate
why Schumann may have taken out four songs.
To be sure, invoking conscious choices by an
authorial subject has routinely raised red ags
in poststructural theories of interpretation, fear-
ful of reducing an artworks meaning to the
deliberate portion of its design. And of course
one does not have to appeal to the composers
intentions to validate the analysis, or use the
analysis to prove some pre-compositional plan-
ning that will once and for all settle the mean-
ing of a work. Nevertheless, evidence of
Schumanns compositional choices in creating
a sensible succession of songs can enrich, rather
tive position on the double trajectory (see g.
6). What seemed well in the beginning has now
been effectively undone.
As the poet relates his story, he descends
further into depression, prompting a new at-
tempt to pull himself out. In the eleventh song,
Ein Jngling liebt ein Mdchen, he changes
for the rst time to the third person to tell the
story of unrequited love as an old story that
happens all the timeeven though it is clear
from the last stanza that it has just happened
to him. The jaunty rhythm appears to put a
good face on the tale, and the boisterous ca-
dence in the postlude strains to leave the whole
affair behind. The poets second attempt to dis-
tance himself from his own experience occurs
in the trajectory of major keys exactly a tritone
away from the opening A major (see g. 7).
What is more, this tonal distance appears to
facilitate a change in direction, leading in the
twelfth song to the rst ending of the cycle.
Against the downward thrust of deepening
despair, the twelfth song, Am leuchtenden
Sommermorgen, marks a decisive turn by tak-
ing one step up the circle of fths, from E
,
major to B
,
major (see g. 8). This reversal
marks a qualitative change in the poets strat-
egy for coping with the situation: not through
angry accusation (as in no. 7) or sarcastic bit-
terness (as in no. 11), but through forgiveness.
Details from the interior of the song support
this qualitative change, notably the magic mo-
ment where the owers speak to the poet and
admonish him not to be angry with their sis-
terthat is, with his beloved. The haunting
shift to G major for this song within the
song (mm. 1718) refers back to no. 4, not just
in key but also in gesture. Fittingly, the owers
ask for forgiveness by invoking the very song
where trust was broken for the rst time. Their
recitation on B (with a characteristic leap up to
D) cites the opening of no. 4 (see g. 9). Strik-
ingly, the very line in that song that cites the
75
BERTHOLD
HOECKNER
Paths through
Dichterliebe
g
,
d
,
A D
f b
G
e
C
a
F
d
B
g
E
c
A
f
D
b
G
e
C
a
F B
, , , , , , ,
, , ,
1/2 3
5 1 6
11 7
8 9 10
4
4a
4b
g
,
d
,
A D
f b
G
e
C
a
F
d
B
g
E
c
A
f
D
b
G
e
C
a
F B
, , , , , , ,
, , ,
Reversal
1/2 3
5 1 6
11 7
8 9 10
4 12
Figure 8: Reversal on the tonal path.
j

,_ ,_ ,_ ,

_ ,_
,

_
,_ ,_

wenn ich in dei ne Au - gen seh
j
,
,
,_ ,_ ,_
,

_ ,_
,_ ,
,
sei uns - rer Schwes - ter nicht b - se
Figure 9: Song no. 4 and the owers song in no. 12.
Figure 10: The place of no. 4a Dein Angesicht
(E
,
) and 4b Lehn Deine Wang (gV/g) on the tonal path.
than delimit, the dramatic dimension of the
performance of both versions. This is because
these four songs stood originally at the two
main nodes of the narrative. Songs 4a and 4b
came after the song in which the poet recog-
nizes that I love you is a lie. And songs 12a
and 12b had their place after the rst ending of
the cycle.
Tonally, the rst pairDein Angesicht (no.
4a in E
,
major) and Lehn Deine Wang (no.
4b in G minor)jumps ahead to the second
node (see g. 10). As a result, these two songs
anticipate the keys of nos. 10 and 11 as their
poems conjure up of a vision of the dead be-
loved and anticipate the poets gushing tears.
However, the ending of no. 4b on the dominant
(the only such ending among the twenty songs),
loops back to the end of no. 3. From here the
tonal path would have continued by dropping
down to the relative minor of Ich will meine
Seele tauchen.
The second pairEs leuchtet meine Liebe
(no. 12a in G minor) and Mein Wagen rollet
langsam (no. 12b in B
,
major)also creates a
loop. But this time the two keys hover around
the same node (see g. 11). Both songs rein-
force the sense of nality and the desire to
reach closure expressed in Am leuchtenden
Sommermorgen. The rst song, Es leuchtet
meine Liebe, looks at the unhappy affair
through the lens of allegory and fairy tale, and
its ending in the tonic major (with the third, B,
in the top register) clearly points back to the
ower song in no. 12. The second song, Mein
Wagen rollet langsam, picks up on the falling
arpeggios of no. 12, but the mood is more sub-
dued. The staccato chords that rip through the
arpeggios sharpen the contrast between illu-
sion and reality, while the long postlude ech-
oes the drawn-out ending of no. 12.
Thus the four omitted songs were unques-
tionably part of an intricate overall tonal de-
sign and narrative plan. By taking them out,
Schumann may have wanted to avoid the du-
76
19
TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
g
,
d
,
A D
f b
G
e
C
a
F
d
B
g
E
c
A
f
D
b
G
e
C
a
F B
, , , , , , ,
, , ,
1/2 3
5 1 6
11 7
8 9 10
4
13
12
collapse
gap
g
,
d
,
A D
f b
G
e
C
a
F
d
B
g
E
c
A
f
D
b
G
e
C
a
F B
, , , , , , ,
, , ,
1/2 3
5 1 6
11 7
8 9 10
4
12b
12a
Figure 11: The place of no. 12a Es leuchet meine Liebe (g/G)
and 12b Mein Wagen rollet langsam (B
,
) on the tonal path.
33
Lerdahl, Tonal Pitch Space, p. 138.
plication of keys and poetic motifs. He also
bypassed the early appearance of stronger moods
and eliminated the drastic specter of the dead
beloved. During the process of revision,
Schumann may have been concerned that the
greater complexity of the 20 Lieder und Gesnge
was more confusing. His changes streamlined
the tonal path and tightened the narrative pro-
gression.
The tonal and narrative function of the extra
songs in the original conception of the cycle
contributes to our understanding of what fol-
lows in both the 20 Lieder und Gesnge and
Dichterliebe. Since daydreams tend to dissi-
pate in the face of reality, the poets desire to
reach closure at the end of no. 12 turns out to
be delusive. There is no way he can climb up
the circle of fths beyond B
,
. The fact that
there is no song in F major suggests a gap that
cannot be crossed, like an abyss without a
bridge. Hovering around B
,
with songs 12a and
12b after the rst ending conveys very well
how the poet gets stuck after hitting a wall.
This realization has a disastrous effect on his
narrative, turning daydreams into nightmares.
Indeed, no. 13, Ich hab im Traum geweinet,
in the starkly somber E
,
minor, is the most
devastating song of Dichterliebe and perhaps
all of Schumann. At this point in Lerdahls
regional journey, the progression of keys
crosses the seam to the adjacent fold and then
continues to descent until c
is reached.
33
Here I part ways with Lerdahl. True, E
,
mi-
nor expresses a qualitative change, but we do
not have to conceptualize this change as a move
across the seam. Assuming that the poet can-
not get past the gap of the missing F-major
song and is thrown back in the opposite direc-
tion, he appears to land on E
,
minor by falling
back on the minor trajectory and skipping over
three steps as shown in g. 12. The failed rst
ending only precipitates the descent into de-
pression and results in a tumble down the circle
of fths. This fall is a collapse in the truest
sense. It constitutes the rst move, in succes-
sive songs, of more than one position. As such,
it is a cornerstone of my analysis, a central
piece in the puzzle of the interlocking tonal
and narrative paths. Take it away and the analy-
sis itself will collapse.
As a consequence of the collapse, Ich hab
im Traum geweinet plunges to the lowest
point yet on the strand of minor keys. Since
the tumble elides (literally: collapses) four sta-
tions on the minor trajectory into one, the third
Figure 12: Gap and collapse.
77
BERTHOLD
HOECKNER
Paths through
Dichterliebe
g
,
d
,
A D
f b
G
e
C
a
F
d
B
g
E
c
A
f
D
b
G
e
C
a
F B
, , , , , , ,
, , ,
1/2 3
5 1 6
11 7
8 9 10
4
13
12
E
c
B
g
15
16
14
return
effort of the poet to pull out of his depression
by getting away from the strand of minor keys
is also the most spectacular. In utter contrast
to the devastation in no. 13, the two songs that
follow (Allnchtlich im Traume and Aus
alten Mrchen winkt es) speak of dreams and
fairy lands in a lighthearted, almost noncha-
lant, manner. If Lerdahl had strictly adhered to
the spelling in Webers map, the keys of these
songs would have been C
,
and F
,
, but he uses
their enharmonic equivalents instead (compare
gs. 1 and 2). However, if we accept Schumanns
notation of these songs in B major and E major
as enharmonic equivalents for C
,
major and F
,
major, and if we locate them on the main tra-
jectory of major keys, then their relationship to
no. 13 changes dramatically, opening up very
different hermeneutic prospects. In g. 13, the
substitution of C
,
and F
,
with B and E takes us
to a place before the beginning.
Figure 14 suggests an explanation. It shows a
pattern whereby the poets ongoing efforts to
pull out of his deepening depression respond to
growing stretches on the strand of minor keys.
Once we include the three keys elided by the
collapse to measure the depth of the fall, we
can see why the third effort to pull away from
the strand of minor keys has to be qualitatively
different: the precipitous fall prompts the poets
most astonishing attempt to cope with his loss.
No longer merely suppressing his anger or re-
sorting to sarcastic mockery, as before, he now
lands himself deeply on the sharp side of the
circle of fths. Now, ostensibly intending to
assuage his sorrow by moving up a major third
to the next major key in the cycle, C
,
, the poet
in fact leaps to the enharmonic equivalent of
this key, B, to the place and time of dream and
wonderland, at the utmost remove from the
earlier (or, vis--vis the rst song, later) troubles
of his broken heart.
Other factors support this hearing. A small
but momentous detail is the change from B
in
no. 12 (mm. 1718) to C
,
in no. 13 (m. 2), which
seems to foreshadow the enharmonic move.
Recall that B is the recitation tone of the ower
song in the poets daydreams, and that C
,
is the
at sixth that articulates the sighs over the
painful visitations of the beloved in no. 13. In
relation to B
,
, the former lifts up; the latter
pulls down. A birds-eye view of the enharmonic
transfer reveals a striking symmetry on the
trajectory of major keys around the missing
song in F major. When counting the keys elided
by the collapse on the major strand of the tra-
jectory, C
,
and B are exactly a tritone away
from F major. Since the F-major gap proved to
be an obstacle for a stepwise ascent through
Figure 13: Return to the time before the beginning.
Figure 14: Three efforts to deal with a deepening depression.
b e
C
a d g
E
c f b e
C
, ,
, ,
third effort second effort rst effort
collapse
78
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TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
A D G C F B E A D G C
, , , , , ,
tritone
E B
gap tritone
collapse
collapse
Figure 15: Jumping over the gap of the absent song in F major.
the circle of fths, g. 15 illustrates how it
appears as if the distance of the tritone makes
it possible for the poet to jump over the very
gap that prevented his earlier return to the be-
ginning.
The enharmonic transfer from C
,
to B also
throws into relief the two endings of
Dichterliebe, the postlude that concludes no.
12 and the recapitulation of that postlude at
the end of no. 16. Between these two endings,
the last four songs emerge as a distinct group.
The rst song of this group, no. 13, exhibits a
strong afnity with song no. 4, the last song in
the opening group of four. Most importantly,
both songs share a similar poetic structure,
which builds up toward a Stimmungsbruch:
34
Ending of Song No. 4
Doch wenn du sprichst: Ich liebe dich
So muss ich weinen bitterlich.
(but when you say: I love you!
then I must weep bitterly.)
Ending of Song No. 13
Ich hab im Traum geweinet,
Mir trumte, du wrst mir noch gut.
Ich wachte auf und noch immer
Strmt meine Thrnenuth.
(I cried in my dream,
I dreamed that you still loved me.
I woke up, and still
the ood of my tears is streaming.)
These two moments are pivotal in the poets
telling of his story. The former relates the on-
34
In the three steps leading to the Stimmungsbruch in no.
4, Schumann intimates a sense of change in lines 5 and 6
(the third step). In no. 13 there are only two preparatory
states, so that the devastating break comes with a big
unresolved climax in the third of the three stanzas.
set of his weeping; the latter speaks of his on-
going ood of tears. While his beloved is physi-
cally present in no. 4, she appears to him in a
dream in no. 13. Initially, she says I love you
but doesnt mean it; later she appears to mean
well, but it is not real. This uncanny similarity
and dissimilarity between the two songs may
well be expressed through the relationship be-
tween their tonics, G major and E
,
minor, which
form a hexatonic pole in neo-Riemannian
terms.
35
In both songs, the Stimmungsbruch
exposes the fault line between appearance and
reality, leading to a break in the poets narra-
tive. Put differently, no. 4 is the end of the
beginning; no. 13 is the beginning of the end. If
we hear no. 13 as the point of departure for the
return to a time before the beginning of the
cycle, g. 16 shows how the two songs ank
the ending and the beginning of the cycle from
both sides. Seen this way, they are equidistant
from the very seam through which one could
connect the last song with the rst through the
dominant relation.
Here lies the crux of Dichterliebe. Is this VI
relation between the last and the rst songs
real or not? The last song begins in C
minor to
summon with greatest resolve the most impos-
ing forces and resourcesgiants and huge cof-
nsto bury the Lieder of the unhappy story
once and for all. But the grandeur of the project
and grandiloquence of its announcement are
effectively undone in one of Schumanns most
ingenious compositional moves: the recapitu-
lation of the postlude from the twelfth song. At
the end of the last song, the poet harks back to
that rst effort to climb up the circle of fths
35
For a suggestive association between hexatonic polarity
and Freuds concept of the uncanny, see Richard Cohn,
Uncanny Resemblances: Tonal Signication in the Freud-
ian Age, Journal of the American Musicological Society
57 (2004), 285323.
79
BERTHOLD
HOECKNER
Paths through
Dichterliebe
e B E c A/f A D G
Beginning
of
End
diatonic polarity
/D
, ,

hexatonic polarity
End
of
Beginning
E
c
A
f

with the hope of forgiveness and consolation.
But now this beautiful song without words
seems to put the poet in the position to start all
over again. The simple fact that the D
,5
that
ends the last song can become the C
5
that
begins the rst is the strongest argument for
Dichterliebe as a tonal unity, governed by a
tonal center. If the concluding D
,
tonic turns
into the dominant of one of the two implied
tonics of the rst song, F
minor, g. 17 goes
even further by suggesting that the E major of
song 15 might also resolve to the other im-
plied tonic of the rst song, A major. This
twofold link would reconnect both strands of
the double trajectory, driven by both Bangen
and Hoffen, fear and hope. Yet if the last dis-
charge of tonal tension through falling fths
would return us this way to the beginning,
why did Schumann change the key of the
postlude from C
major to D
,
major?
36
Schumanns preference may be just a nota-
tional convenience, but the alteration does in-
vite more hermeneutic speculation. Heard in
D
,
, the postlude (whose renotated meter of
6
4
time suggests a more measured and reective
tempo) takes the poet to a very different place
on the tonal path of Dichterliebe. In Lerdahls
graph, this D
,
major is located on the strand of
major keys, a location that results from the
crossing of the fold to E
,
minor at no. 13 and
crossing back later (see g. 1). A different sce-
Figure 16: Hexatonic and diatonic polarities
around the beginning and end.
36
Already in the twenty-song autograph Schumann noted
that in a marginal note: ?NB: Hier ist besser Des Dur
vorzuzeichnen (?NB: D
,
major is preferable here). See Hall-
mark, The Genesis of Dichterliebe, p. 110.
nario emerges if we hear the change from C
minor to C
major merely as a change of mode

and not as a change of key, and then hear the
enharmonic move from C
to D
,
as a return to
the equivalent place at the other end of the
double trajectory. In fact, Webers map sug-
gests the closeness of parallel keys on a given
double trajectory by lining them up across each
fold, without which they would merge into a
single tonic. Support for this view of the modal
mixture in no. 16 comes through song no. 9,
which starts out in D minor but ends in D
major. Hence the enharmonic change from C
to D
,
in the nal song moves us exactly to the
point low in the double trajectory, from whence
the cycle could start over again in B
,,
major and
G
,
minor, the enharmonic equivalents of the
rst song (see g. 18). This return suggests that
the attempt to go back to a time before the
cycle was illusory, like the dreams and fairy
tales conjured up in song nos. 14 and 15. As the
last line of no. 15 has it, the illusion evaporates
like empty foam. The return to D
,
is a return
to reality, which only makes obvious that the
poet cannot turn the clock back.
To conclude, then, I submit that the ending
of Dichterliebe is about dimming the differ-
ence between dream and reality. This slippage
emerges from the way the poet continues with
his story after the rst ending in no. 12. After
the collapse, his narrative takes place in both
real and imaginary space. The poet stages a
return to the beginning and at the same time
continues along a path that descends. Being in
two places at once reects on the poets mental
condition in the face of his loss. His daydreams
are an expression of his despair. After the rst
ending, his depression continues in the form of
a regression, yet the regression only leads deeper
into depression. As return and nonreturn, the
two enharmonic moves pronounce the mean-
ing of Dichterliebe (and the 20 Lieder und
Gesnge) as one that uctuates between closed
circle and open cycle, between Classical and
Figure 17: Connecting the end and beginning
of the double trajectory.
80
19
TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
Figure 18: Illusory return and return to reality.
Romantic form, and between whole and frag-
ment. This meaning resonates with the way
Slavoj Zizek imagines how absent melodies in
Schumanns music exemplify modern subjec-
tivity: The modern subject emerges when its
objectal counterpart (in this case, a melody)
disappears, but remains present (efcient) in its
very absence: in short, the subject is correla-
tive to an impossible object whose existence
is purely virtual.
37
This paradox might ex-
plain the impossible, but efcacious, simulta-
neity of the enharmonic return and nonreturn.
The question whether Dichterliebe reaches clo-
sure remains impossible to answer. We dont
know whether the poet returns to A major and
F
minor, or goes on with B

,,
major and G
,
minor, because they sound the same.
This position between closed circle and open
cycle resembles the disposition between what
Freud called compulsory repetition and the pos-
sibility of working through the trauma of loss,
or between melancholia (whose xation on the
lost object hinders healing) and mourning
(which leaves the lost object behind). While
the closed circle prevents healing, the open-
ended cycle fosters forgetting and forgiveness.
As an expression of Heines wound, the tonal
disposition of Dichterliebe puts the poet on
the fence between the two. When the concep-
tion of different keys on a tonal map clashes
with the perception of their sameness in sound,
the composer can convey his poets paradoxi-
cal double experience of wholeness and frag-
mentation. This is how Schumann knew the
irony of Heines poetic suicide at the cross-
roads of Romanticism and modernism. He knew
that there grows the
Armesnderblum.
Abstract.
The article advances a new case for a coherent tonal
and narrative structure of Schumanns Dichterliebe,
op. 48. Based on a map of key relations by Gottfried
Weber, the hermeneutic analysis follows Dichter-
liebes tonal path along a double trajectory of major
keys and their relative minor keys, whose progres-
sion through tonal space is understood as occur-
rences in event space. A comparison between Dich-
terliebe and its original version, 20 Lieder und
Gesnge, shows how the tonal and narrative paths
pertain to both. The hermeneutic analysis demon-
strates a slippage between story and narrative as
well as reality and illusion, whereby Schumann re-
sponds to Heines irony, creating a tonal and narra-
tive structure that is both circular and cyclical, both
whole and fragment.
Key words: Schumann, Dichterliebe, op. 48, Heine,
tonal structure, narrative, Gottfried Weber
37
Slavoj Zizek, Robert Schumann: The Romantic Anti-
Humanist? in The Plague of Fantasies (London: Verso,
1997), p. 204.
g
,
d
,
A D
f b
G
e
C
a
F
d
B
g
E
c
A
f
D
b
G
e
C
a
F B
, , , , , , ,
, , ,
1/2 3
5 1 6
11 7
8 9 10
4
13
12
E
c
B
g
15
16
14
D
,
C
16
return to reality
illusory return
16
l


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Paths through Dichterliebe

Review by: Berthold Hoeckner

minor, but cadences twice to

and I/A), the circle

[see the shaded boxes

]. It is tempting to ascribe narrative

minor in the rst song. This double trajectory

Figure 4: The rst four songs.

major merely as a change of mode

minor, or goes on with B

This content downloaded from 171.67.34.69 on Fri, 21 Jun 2013 02:34:35 AM

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