Schubert’s Ganymede, beauty and charm
I’ve been wanting to return to Schubert’s lieder for some time. There is almost nothing like them in the history of art in terms of variety and completeness. While I worship Bach and his cantatas, Beethoven and his symphonies or piano sonatas, Mozart and his piano concertos and Verdi in his operas, somehow all of them seem less varied than Schubert and his lieder. One feels, like it would be easier to plumb the depths of those other universes than to fully understand Schubert’s lieder as a whole: they are Shakespearian in their completeness, variety, and inscrutability.
As I’ve said elsewhere, a supreme composer setting a supreme poet to music is a rare thing in the history of art. Schubert set Goethe to music quite often, and never seemed to take that weighty task for granted. So many of his best lieder come from setting Goethe’s words: “Erlkönig,” “Gretchen am Spinnrade,” and “Heidenröslein,“ were all products of this “collaboration.“ I adore all these lieder, but Schubert’s setting of Goethe’s “Ganymed“ was my focus this week, and it was a delight to consider this beautiful little masterpiece.
Any consideration of the lied must begin with a separate consideration of the poem itself. Settings of pre-existing words I find especially delightful, as it is possible to pinpoint specific moments in the artistic process. For at one critical moment, only the poem exists and not the lied, and then the poem exists and only some half-formed thoughts about it. These specific moments are harder to identify when composers write absolute music: we can only trust what the composer tells us about the process. Let me begin by discussing the poem itself and then considering what Schubert thoughts on the poem.
Part of this poem’s unusual strength is its beautiful freedom, something that Schubert imitates and expresses almost unnaturally wonderfully, with truly virtuoso writing, so beautifully striking. Goethe set his poem with no regular versification and only one moment of rhyme. This unusual freedom makes the poem “Ganymed” feel like a spontaneous succession of fully organic thoughts. It is one of those masterful turns, where a genius makes something necessarily so studied and composed feel spontaneous and offhand. Schubert is faced with a special problem with a poem of such unusual freedom. A strophic or modified strophic setting would not do: if he wants to make use of the poem’s spontaneity, he can’t subject it to the same music for each extremely different section.
When a composer sets a text, he is using a work of art already in existence as a part of a larger work of art (the lied) he intends to create. As such, he should carefully consider the poem by itself, and how it attains its power and appeal. Because if he respects that power and finds a way to incorporate it into his product, that power will magnify the compound artwork. Part of Schubert’s gift as a songwriter lies in his gift as an exceptional reader, and that is nowhere more evident than in “Ganymed.” Once I began to consider the ways in which Schubert matches, affirms and even enhances the power of the poem, I quickly found myself overwhelmed.
Goethe himself takes the received myth and enhances the character of Ganymede into someone unspeakably charming rather than simply good-looking. The mythical Ganymede is little more than beautiful, a visual ornament to the throne-room of Zeus, completely passive, acted upon not active. But Goethe gives Ganymede a personality and agency that run counter to the received myth. I like to think that perhaps Goethe created his Ganymede in his own image, making him fun-loving, spontaneous, and charming beyond words, as the poet was known to be. This is an interesting switch, as it turns Ganymede into a more desirable person that he was when he was simply beautiful to look at. Fun-loving people are a joy to be around: one understands why Zeus would want to have Ganymede serving him wine. A person merely beautiful of face and form is one thing, but one beautiful to look at and fun to be around takes the cake every time.
An image from a fifth century B.C. vase by the unnamed Greek artist we know as the Berlin Painter. The opposite side of the vase shows Zeus in pursuit. Notice how the artist portrays his youth by having him play with a hoop. Wise, as if I saw this painting of a man with as developed a figure as this on a vase, I would never think of him as very young, and thus not associate him with the figure of Ganymede. The cockerel perched on his left arm was a traditional love-gift to the passive beloved in Greek culture.
The agency of Ganymede is also worth mentioning. Does this feel like a violent kidnapping or abduction? No! Ganymede states “Ich komm’, ich komme!” “I come, I come!” before the clouds even seem to lean down to him. The line “Umfangend, umfangen,” “embracing, embraced,” by itself contrasts deliciously with the received Ganymede abduction story.
Schubert plays up Ganymede’s charm. I love especially the music beginning measure 31, before Ganymede sings “Could I but embrace you in this arm!” so naturally playful, the listener easily imagines him ambling along, even skipping, smiling delightedly. Aside from a (minor chord) touch of holy reverence when singing about the eternal holy warmth (“heilig gefuhl”), and the determination and ecstasy in the last third of the lied, the picture of Schubert’s Ganymede is predominantly one of him as a playful and delighted youth, extremely sensitive to nature’s many beauties.
One of the things that characterizes Schubert’s setting is the conception more as an operatic scene than simply as a song. In addition, to the ascending chords of the last few bars, depicting Ganymede’s ascent into heaven, and his jubilant skipping along in measures 31-45, consider the piano trill symbolizing the nightingales’s call. I love how it seems to interrupt Ganymede, overlapping with his line. As soon as he hears the nightingale’s trill begin, he grows quiet to enjoy it.
Additionally, the beginning, prior to the entrance of Ganymede’s singing, feels distinctly like setting a scene. Schubert accomplishes this in a few ways, but chief among them, is by establishing a pattern before the singer enters, and then having the pattern remain unchanged after Ganymede begins to sing. Ganymede also enters with musical material that doesn’t feel derived from the opening chords, but feels like different melodic material, naturally less active, at least at first. Using tools like this, Schubert gives Goethe’s dramatic monologue a real stage to play out on. One is reminded of Goethe’s comment on Schubert’s Erlkonig setting: though mostly indifferent, he nevertheless complimented Schubert’s ability to create “a visible picture.” This “visible picture” takes shape here as well.
A listener can like this lied in a number of ways. He can enjoy the music, he can enjoy the story, but both of these things are so wrapped up in the character of Ganymede and Schubert’s depiction of him, that one cannot escape coming under Ganymede’s spell.
Gabriel Ferrier’s famous 1874 painting of Ganymede’s abduction. In ancient eras, Ganymede was usually depicted with a manly figure, but after the rise of Christianity, he was often portrayed very androgynously, as he is here. If you saw just the face in this painting and knew nothing about Ganymede’s backstory, would you consider this figure a man or a woman?
If music history has taught us anything, it’s that a key part of the composer’s job is setting words to music effectively. And yet curiously being a reading well is not a prized skill among composers. Most of the composers I know cannot appreciate a poem, cannot identify all that it is about, the ways in which it defies expectations, its turning points, the ways in which it plays upon an established tradition or departs from it. When I think of the best readers in the history of Western music, my mind immediately goes to Schubert and to Richard Strauss (his talent for this cannot be understated), though I understand Bach is also a great talent in this regard, even if I do not know his insights so well. Schumann, Wolf, Berlioz and even Mendelssohn are all composers of some skill here. It makes me question, in what ways can another non-musical talent enhance musical talent? Truly all these things are connected, as as we consider our special skills in all areas of life, and where our special place is within the world of art.
