Ständchen (Schubert)

Critical commentary

Schubert's biographer John Reed (1909–1999) says that the song "celebrates the universality two of the world's greatest song-writers." Richard Capell in his survey of Schubert's songs, called the Ständchen "very pretty" but "a trifle overrated [...] the song is hardly one to be very fond of. Not a lifetime of familiarity with it can bridge the gap that yawns between the Elizabethan's verse and the Austrian's tune." On the other hand, while discussing the variorum readings of Shakespeare's play, Howard Furness refers to "the version which Schubert sets to peerless music", and Sir George Grove describes how "that beautiful song, so perfectly fitting the words, and so skilful and happy in its accompaniment, came into perfect existence."

Genesis of the lied

A story about the song's creation was recounted by a boyhood friend of Schubert to the composer's biographer, Heinrich Kreissle von Hellborn in his Life of Franz Schubert. Sir George Grove relates Kreissle's anecdote verbatim, although it has been called "pretty, but untrue", "apocryphal", and "legend".

Herr Franz Doppler (of the musical firm of Spina) told me the following story in connection with the Ständchen:——"One Sunday, during the summer of 1826, Schubert with several friends was returning from Pötzleinsdorf to the city, and on strolling along through Währing, he saw his friend Ludwig Titze sitting at a table in the garden of the 'Zum Biersack'. The whole party determined on a halt in their journey. Tietze had a book lying open before him, and Schubert soon began to turn over the leaves. Suddenly he stopped, and pointing to a poem, exclaimed, "such a delicious melody has just come into my head, if I but had a sheet of music paper with me." Herr Doppler drew a few music lines on the back of a bill of fare, and in the midst of a genuine Sunday hubbub, with fiddlers, skittle players, and waiters running about in different directions with orders, Schubert wrote that lovely song.

Maurice Brown, in his critical biography of Schubert, partially debunks the story, showing that the garden of the 'Zum Biersack' in Währing was next door to that of the poet Franz von Schober, and that Schubert spent some time there in the summer of 1826 with the painter Moritz von Schwind, although not necessarily staying overnight more than once or twice. Brown thinks that Doppler may have been confused about the place where the incident took place. Brown in his book only mentions Titze twice in passing, however, and not in connection with the story of the menu.

The English text

The German translation which Schubert set has the same metre/rhythm as Shakespeare's lyric, which allows the music to be sung to the original English words.

Shakespeare

The Song from Cymbeline, Act II, Scene 3, is full of compressed meaning and metaphor. It is considered at length and in detail in the posthumously published variorum edition of the First Folio by Howard Furness. The following three lines are particularly dense with allusion:

These phrases are explained by William Warburton (sometime Bishop of Gloucester) in a succinct paraphrase in his 1747 edition of Alexander Pope's version of Shakespeare: represented by the mythical horses which pull Phoebus' fiery chariot, "the morning sun dries the dew which lies in the cups of flowers."

The stanza or stave of this song is one of four fourteen-syllable verses, and a refrain.

18th century editors

Alexander Pope tampered with the division of Shakespeare's lines as they stood in the First Folio. Sir Thomas Hanmer, 4th Baronet, (another 'improver' of Shakespeare) added his "rustick and antequated" rhyming emendations to the new caesuras; thus the 'pretty bin' which found its way into many editions of Shakespeare, and into numerous Schubert editions in English.

Furness confesses that "It is not easy to recall any needless emendation of Shakespeare which is become so imbedded in the popular mind as this substitution by Hanmer of bin. This is due partly to the mistaken idea that a rhyme is needed to 'begin', partly because Hanmer's was the edition of the nobility and gentry, partly, I think, because 'bin' is adopted in the version which Schubert sets to peerless music." A quarrel between Hanmer and Warburton over an entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica seems to have been a storm in a teacup, according to The Monthly Review.

Song title

In German translations of Cymbeline, the short lyric which Schubert set to music is simply titled Lied ('Song'). Schubert's title, Ständchen, is usually translated into English as Serenade, which itself derives from fr:le soir; this can be slightly disquieting for an English speaker, since this word specifically refers to a musical performance in the evening; the early hours are reserved for the 'aubade' (from fr:l'aube). The words of the poem, and its context within the play, indicate that is unquestionably to be sung in the morning: if there were any doubt, the lines which immediately precede the text of the 'Song' include this snippet of dialogue:

The German word 'Ständchen' is unspecific about the time of the homage, and lacks the connotations of the gloaming of the English equivalent. As others have pointed out, and as Furness in his 'Variorum Edition' of Cymbeline makes abundantly clear, "This present song is the supreme crown of all aubades..." The Schirmer edition of Liszt's transcription for solo piano clarifies the context with the title of Morgenständchen ('morning serenade'), and the German title of Schubert's song would be more accurately rendered in English as Aubade.

Background

Attribution

Schubert's song was published posthumously as 'Ständchen von Shakespeare' in part seven of Diabelli's first edition of Schubert's songs (Schubert 1830, p. 3). See § Ex. 2 below. Two further verses were added by Friedrich Reil (1773–1843) for the second edition (Schubert 1832); the Peters edition in the original key retains the attribution to 'Shakespeare'.

Both the Breitkopf & Härtel edition of 1894–95, and in the Peters edition for low voice credit A. W. Schlegel with the words. Otto Deutsch in his 1951 Schubert Thematic Catalogue entry for D889 also gives "deutsch von August Wilhelm Schlegel", with no further details.

Various German translations of Cymbeline appeared from the late eighteenth century onwards; many of them are listed in Blinn & Schmidt 2003. The attribution to Schlegel appears to be based on a translation of Cymbeline bearing his name in a collected edition – by multiple translators – of Shakespeare's plays, published in Vienna in 1825 (sometimes called the 'Wiener Shakespeare-Ausgabe' or 'Vienna Shakespeare edition'). This edition appeared in at least four slightly differing printings from two publishers; three of the volumes containing Cymbeline bore Schlegel's name on the title page, although a fourth appeared anonymously.

The following sections attempt to show that while the greater majority of the lines of the Ständchen are very nearly the same as in a number of previous adaptations of Shakespeare by other hands, the text which Schubert used is not that of the 'Schlegel' Cymbeline of 1825. Schubert, like many other composers, sometimes altered the words he was setting, even drastically; but the similar nature of the small variations between all the versions below, none of which are exactly reproduced by Schubert, indicates that he may have been using some other edition.

J. J. Eschenburg, 1777 and 1805

Ignoring all other differences in the rest of Cymbeline, the text of the 'Lied' itself in Act II which Schubert set survives relatively unchanged from a translation which J. J. Eschenburg had published in 1777. See § Ex. 4 below. The 1777 edition was revised in 1805, with a slightly different version of the 'Lied'. See § Ex. 5

Abraham Voß, 1810

Apart from the first line – which is considerably altered – and a few other smaller changes, Eschenburg's text of the Lied appears almost verbatim in an 1810 verse translation of Cymbeline made by Abraham Voß. This was published by J. G. Cotta along with Macbeth by his brother Heinrich Voß in Tübingen See § Ex. 6 beloww.

The 'collaboration' between the Voß brothers began as early as 1806, when Heinrich moved from Weimar (where he had been with Goethe and Schiller) to join his family in Heidelberg where they had moved from Jena in July 1805. Their father, Johann Heinrich Voß had already published translations of two Shakespeare plays made under the auspices of Schiller and Goethe respectively. Heinrich continued his Shakespeare translations in Heidelberg, soon to be joined in this undertaking by Abraham. Between 1810 and 1815, the two sons published three volumes of Shakespeare's plays, none of which had been rendered in German by Schlegel. The first volume published during these years in Heidelberg was Heinrich's translation of Macbeth and Abraham's rendering of Cymbeline. Heinrich Voß knew Martin Wieland, one of the first translators of Shakespeare into German, whose first attempts were first published in 1762–66.

According to Drewing, "Heinrich Voß thought Abraham was weak, and it is not easy to see how far and on what basis Abraham and Heinrich collaborated" An unpublished letter from Heinrich to a friend, Bernhard Rudolf Abeken (3 July 1816), complains about the help which Abraham required with his translations. Another letter to Abeken illustrates the extent to which Abraham relied on Heinrich's help: "But said frankly: Abraham's translation in its many merits [...] is too faithful to still be faithful/true. In such verses as ... I do not find Shakspeare again/afresh, who in his construction is mostly very easy; wherever it is not it, it is daring ... Then again, Abraham's expressions are often too low; rascal, scoundrel occur very often ... Make him do it again, carefully." The first volume by Johann Heinrich Voß and his sons appeared in 1818. Heinrich Voss died in 1822 of dropsy aged 43, and Abraham and his father Johann Heinrich Voss completed the work over a number of years. Abraham's earlier version of the 'Lied' was considerably revised for the 1828 edition prepared by Heinrich and their father. See § Ex. 8 below for a comparison, although it appeared in 1828 after Schubert had written the Ständchen.

The Voß's modernising treatment of Shakespeare's often complex and daring Elizabethan language appealed to 19th-century German sensibilities, portraying Shakespeare as a modern German writer using 'correct' and up-to-date forms of language. According to Drewing, "...the aim of Johann Heinrich (the father) and Heinrich Voß was precisely not to make Shakespeare sound like a 19th century German poet, but to convey the essence of an alien work; and that any departures from conventional literary German are intentional and represent an attempt not to reduce the sense of otherness in the text." [emphases added.]

For all its merits, the Voß Shakespeare was considered incompatible with contemporary taste, whereas the so-called 'Schlegel-Tieck' edition conformed with it. "What the German public demands is a Shakespeare who speaks 'that kind of [German] which he would have spoken had he lived in [Germany], and had written to this age' – everything, in fact, which the Voß Shakespeare is and does not." This attitude was in keeping with the 'contemporary' approach towards translation of which Goethe was a proponent.

The Voß's work was unfavourably compared to the so-called Schlegel-Tieck complete Shakespeare edition in verse translation, which appeared at around the same time. Although Ludwig Tieck's name appears on the title page, he was only associated with this edition in a purely advisory capacity with responsibility for editing and compiling annotations. His daughter Dorothea Tieck and Wolf Graf von Baudissin had a considerable hand in supplying the so-called Schlegel-Tieck translation. Cymbeline was translated by Tieck's daughter Dorothea, although Schlegel was apparently unhappy with the first new edition ('Schlegel-Tieck' 1833) and repudiated Tieck's revisions; later editions (1839–41) restored Schlegel's translations and notes. See § Ex. 9 below for comparison, which appeared in 1833 after Schubert's death in 1828.

Schlegel and Eschenburg, 1811

Abraham Voß's 1810 translation of Cymbeline was published again in 1811 in a complete edition, with the names of A. W. Schlegel and J. J. Eschenburg on the title-page. The text of the 'Song' is the same as § Ex. 5 below.

'Vienna Shakespeare edition', 1825–1827

A collected German edition of Shakespeare's plays in verse ("in Metrum des Original") – by multiple translators – was published in Vienna in 1825 and 1826 (sometimes called the 'Wiener Shakespeare Ausgabe' or 'Vienna edition'). It was commissioned by the "indefatigable" printer and lithographer Joseph Trentsensky, one of whose employees was the lithographer Josef Kriehuber. Some translations were newly done for this 'Vienna edition', including Antony and Cleopatra and The Two Gentlemen of Verona by Eduard Bauernfeld (from which Schubert took his other two Shakespeare songs Trinklied, D888 and Was ist Silvia, D981): other translations in the Vienna edition had been previously published. This collection appeared in at least four slightly differing versions from two publishers, which should perhaps be called the 'Vienna editions'.

The German words which Schubert used for the Ständchen are usually attributed to August Schlegel. His name appears on the title pages of three of the Cymbelines, but is strangely omitted on a fourth. See § Notes. Whatever Schlegel's involvement in the 1825–6 publications, there are small but significant differences between the Vienna editions and Schubert's manuscript. See § Ex. 7 beloww. (C180)

Summary

The text of the 'Lied' from Shakespeare's Cymbeline which Schubert set contains considerable similarities to the very first translations of Shakespeare into German by J. J. Eschenburg in 1777. The version which Schubert set differs only very slightly in its orthography ('Ätherblau' etc.) from that of Abraham Voß ('Aetherblau', etc.), which dates from at least 1810. This 'Ätherblau' version was published in 1812 under the names of A. W. Schlegel and J. J. Eschenburg, and then in at least four slightly differing printings of the 'Vienna Shakespeare Editions' in 1825 and 1826, with and without Schelegel's name on the title-page.

Schubert manuscripts

The earliest surviving Schubert autograph MS is in the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus. It consists of four Lieder (of which the Ständchen is the second) in a pocket-sized MS book with staves hand-ruled by Schubert. At of the top of the first page, in Schubert's hand, is written: Währing, July 1826, followed by his signature.

1. "Trinklied", D888 – (Antony & Cleopatra, Act II, Scene 7 – trans. Eduard Bauernfeld & Ferdinand Mayrhofer von Grünbühel)
2. "Ständchen", D889 ("Hark, hark, the lark") - (Cymbeline, Act II, Scene 3 - possibly not trans. by Schlegel)
3. "Hippolits Lied", D890 - by Friedriech von Gerstenberg
4. Gesang, D891 ("Was ist Sylvia?") – (Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act IV, Scene 2 – trans. Bauernfeld alone)

The text of the MS is exactly reproduced in the first published edition of the song (Schubert 1830, pp. 14–15 [16–17]), except for some very minor punctuation. Fair autograph copies of two of the four songs in the Vienna Library MS ("Trinklied" and "Was ist Silvia?") are held in the Hungarian National Library (National Széchényi Library).

Arrangements

Ständchen has been arranged for various instrumental combinations, including Franz Liszt's transcription for solo piano, published by Diabelli in 1838 as no. 9, Ständchen von Shakespeare, of his 12 Lieder von Franz Schubert, S.558.