Schubert's dream

Nineteenth Century Music

Volumn 23, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 136-144

  Pesic, Peter ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 62449224583     PISSN: 01482076     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/746920     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. Alfred Brendel, "Form and Psychology in Beethoven's Piano Sonatas," in Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts (Princeton, 1976), pp. 41-42
2. see also his more detailed treatment in "Schubert's Last Sonatas," in Music Sounded Out (New York, 1990), pp. 72-141
3. See Hugh Macdonald, "Schubert's Volcanic Temper," Musical Times 119 (1978), 949-52
4. This "allegorical tale" is included in Otto Erich Deutsch, The Schubert Reader (New York, 1947), pp. 226-28
5. another translation is given by Maynard Solomon, "Franz Schubert's 'My Dream'," American Imago 38 (1981), 137-54
6. Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 10 (1839), 37
7. Deutsch, Schubert Reader, p. 228
8. See also Maurice J. E. Brown, Schubert: A Critical Biography (New York, 1978), pp. 114-16
9. and John Reed, Schubert (New York, 1997), p. 94, who suggested that it could have come out of a party game
10. Elizabeth Norman McKay, Franz Schubert: A Biography (Oxford, 1996), pp. 126-29, speculates that the "Dream" might have been written in an opium reverie, but considers that "it is rather unlikely that 'Mein Traum' can explain or point to anything of appreciable significance about the composer's psychology" (p. 129)
11. Brian Newbould agrees with this view in Schubert: The Music and the Man (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1997), p. 180
12. Solomon, "Franz Schubert's 'My Dream'," p. 150; this article contains references to earlier psychological and biographical interpretations of the tale
13. See the controversy in this journal, beginning with Maynard Solomon, "Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini," 12 (1989), 193-206
14. and "Schubert: Some Consequences of Nostalgia," 17 (1993), 34-46
15. and the responses in vol. 17 (1993): Rita Steblin, "The Peacock's Tale: Schubert's Sexuality Reconsidered," 5-33
16. Susan McClary, "Music and Sexuality: On the Steblin/Solomon Debate," 83-88
17. James Webster, "Music, Pathology, Sexuality, Beethoven, Schubert," 89-93
18. and Robert S. Winter, "Whose Schubert?" 94-101
19. Arnold Schering, Franz Schubert's Symphonie in H-Moll ("Unvollendete") und ihr Gehemnis (Würtzburg-Aumühle, 1939), which Deutsch dismisses as "amateurish"
20. see Franz Schubert, Symphony in B Minor ("Unfinished"), ed. Martin Chusid (New York, 1968), p. 91, n. 1. I thank Maynard Solomon for directing me to the Schering references
21. See Edward T. Cone, The Composer's Voice (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1974), pp. 6-19
22. Newbould emphasizes the similarities to the "Archduke" in Schubert, pp. 334-35
23. Edward T. Cone, "Schubert's Promissory Note: An Exercise in Musical Hermeneutics," in Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies, ed. Walter Frisch (Lincoln, Neb., 1986), pp. 13-30, at p. 26. Notwithstanding Cone's biographical interpretation, "My Dream" may represent Schubert's attempt to find a more universal symbolization of the fundamental structure that recurs in his music
24. See, for instance, Charles Rosen, Sonata Forms (New York, 1980), pp. 246-49
25. and The Frontiers of Meaning (New York, 1994), pp. 120-23
26. Brendel prefers to see the trill as "the disclosure of a third dimension" (Music Sounded Out, p. 74)
27. The "Archduke" Trio's slow movement (in D) finally dissolves into its musical flat signVI, the main key of the other movements, Bmusical flat sign Unforgettable passages of the Ninth Symphony Adagio are spent in that domain, among numerous other moments, including the "Appassionata" slow movement (Dmusical flat sign, as musical flat signVI of the first movement's F minor). See the classic account in Donald Francis Tovey, "Tonality in Schubert," in The Main Stream of Music (New York, 1949), pp. 134-59
28. See also Susan McClary, "Pitches, Expression, Ideology: An Exercise in Mediation," Enclitic 7 (1983), 76-86, 3which I will address below
29. See James Webster, "Schubert's Sonata Form and Brahms's First Maturity," this journal 2 (1978), 18-35
30. 9 Gmusical flat sign Major," this journal 11 (1988), 221-37
31. and Richard Kramer, Distant Cycles: Schubert and the Conceiving of Song (Chicago, 1994), pp. 17-18 (concerning Nähe des Geliebten)
32. See the discussions in Lawrence Siegel, Schubert's Harmonic Geometry: Structural Means in the First Movement of the Bmusical flat sign Piano Sonata (D.960) (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1988)
33. and Mary-Martha Bante-Knight, Tonal and Thematic Coherence in Schubert's Piano Sonata in B-flat (Ph.D. diss., Washington University, 1983)
34. Tovey refers to a "round of keys" or "enharmonic circle" here, although he interprets the D as Bmusical flat sign iii; see "Tonality in Schubert," p. 159
35. John Reed, Schubert: The Final Years (New York, 1972), pp. 231-32, who notes that mm. 1-2 of this song also seem to reappear as an important motive in mm. 151-82 of the development of the Sonata
36. See Tovey, "Tonality in Schubert," pp. 146-59
37. McClary, in "Pitches, Expression, Ideology," tends to limit the affect of musical flat signVI by treating it ideologically as "a cruel hoax - a betrayal" (p. 80)
38. under the rubric of "post-Enlightenment disillusion" (p. 81)
39. Because musical flat signVI, however, has a deep structural role it cannot be considered merely as a "false hope" (p. 78); it indicates something potent, though inward and subtle
40. See Webster, "Schubert's Sonata Form," pp. 18-35
41. See Kinderman's essay on "Schubert's Tragic Perspective," in Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies, pp. 65-83, at p. 77
42. Tovey discusses this "enharmonic circle of thirds" in "Tonality in Schubert," p. 155. The mystery of the "promissory note" Emusical sharp sign = Fmusical sharp sign in the Moment musical no. 6 may be that this note is common to musical flat signVI (E) and also musical flat signVI/musical flat signVI (C, in which it first appears at m. 12); this multivalence underlies its complex relation to its "promised" resolution as leading tone to Fmusical sharp sign (vi), for it is also "promised" to the two other tonalities in the circle of sixths
43. Compare Feil, Franz Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin; Winterreise, trans. Ann C. Sherwin (Portland, 1988), p. 62
44. and Susan Youens, Franz Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin (Cambridge, 1992), p. 83
45. Although I believe this is Schubert's only setting of these contrasting words, in Nacht und Träume (1822?, D. 827) he uses I for "holy night" and musical flat signVI for the delusive day the sleeper wishes to escape in dreams (m. 15)
46. "Ist es der Nachklang meiner Liebespein? Soll es das Vorspiel neuer Lieder sein?" mm. 64-69. Note that this passage is prepared by an arrival at C minor (m. 55), followed by Amusical flat sign as musical flat signVI of C minor
47. Lawrence Kramer, "The Schubert Lied: Romantic Form and Romantic Consciousness," in Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies, pp. 200-36, at p. 217
48. 7; after a significant silence, his confident answer comes over a tonic pedal (mm. 40-49)
49. Although written later than Die schöne Müllerin, Beethoven's String Quartet in F Major, op. 135 (1826), also uses the half step Amusical flat sign → G to dramatize the "difficult question" (Der schwer gefasste Entschluss) "Muss es sein? Es muss sein!"
50. For the Bmusical flat sign Sonata a close parallel may be Beethoven's "Appassionata," whose recurrent motive Dmusical flat sign - C (as 6-5) and characteristic Neapolitan relations bear close comparison with Schubert's use of the Gmusical flat sign-F trill, although he uses them very differently than Beethoven, as Charles Rosen emphasizes in "Schubert's Inflections of Classical Form," in The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 72-98, at pp. 96-97
51. See also Joseph Kerman, "A Romantic Detail in Schubert's Schwanengesang," in Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies, pp. 48-64, n. 7
52. Rosen, "Schubert's Inflections," p. 98