Listening for Schubert’s “Doppelgängers”
David Løberg Code
KEYWORDS: Schubert, doppelganger, Heine, song, analysis, key characteristics
ABSTRACT: A doppelgänger is the ghostly double or wraith of a living person. This essay adopts and adapts this legend to an analysis of Franz Schubert’s song “Der Doppelgänger.” I begin by discussing ways in which the myth of the doppelgänger might relate to Schubert’s personality and other extramusical features such as affective key characteristics. Next, these constructions are mapped onto the piece itself, exploring multiple implications of motivic pitch structures and binary oppositions among chords and modalities. After tracing these features through the piece, I relate this detailed analysis to an interpretation of the text, and finally, aspects of Schubert’s personal life.
Copyright © 1995 Society for Music Theory
[1] “Still ist die Nacht” is the opening line of an untitled poem in Heinrich Heine’s collection, Die Heimkehr. Most of us know this poem by its inclusion in Franz Schubert’s Schwanengesang.(1) Regarding Schubert’s setting of the poem, Jack Stein describes it as “painfully wrong in its interpretation of the poem.” For example, “the first stanza, which Schubert sets in a darkly atmospheric, highly charged recitative over somber chords
[2] Schubert’s invocation of “Der Doppelgänger” brings to the foreground a host of cultural myths and imagery that would otherwise be absent from the opening of Heine’s poem. Literally meaning the ‘double-goer,’ the idea of a “spirit double, an exact but usually invisible replica of every human, bird, or beast is an ancient one” (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1985, 182). In Schubert’s time, the character of the doppelgänger was probably best known through the literary works of Johann Wolfgang Goethe and E.T.A. Hoffmann. That Schubert was familiar with the myth is evident, not only due to his choice of title, but even because of his spelling of the word. In the original poem, Heine uses the word “doppeltgänger,” (doubled-goer) while Schubert (omitting the “t”) chose the more common form of the word. Furthermore, Given that Heine uses the word only once in the last stanza of the poem, he apparently wished to postpone or perhaps even downplay the mythical associations. In rebutting what he calls Stein’s “often maddeningly wrongheaded study of Schubert’s Heine songs,” Richard Kramer (1985, 219) argues that it is entirely appropriate for Schubert to remake Heine’s poem. “It is in the nature of Romantic art,” says Kramer, “that idiosyncratic, personal style is a deep part of the message.
[3] Schubert may have identified with the notion of the doppelgänger—a shadow-self—because of the double life he himself apparently led. As his friend Eduard Bauernfeld described him, “Schubert had, so to speak, a double nature.
[4] “Der Doppelgänger” begins in the key of B minor, evoking the opening of the “Unfinished” Symphony with which it shares not only the same key, but a similar bass motive. Susan McClary (1994, 225) describes the latter as an example of a victim narrative in which “a sinister affective realm sets the stage for the vulnerable lyrical subject, which is doomed to be quashed.”(2) One of the means by which Schubert creates this “affective realm” in “Der Doppelgänger” is through his careful choice of keys. Although references to key qualities abound, the topic has been largely neglected in our time until Rita Steblin’s (1983) A History of Key Characteristics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries. Historically, the most influential work on this subject was probably the Ideen zu einer Asthetik der Tonkunst of Christian Schubart, written about 1784, and published posthumously in 1806. That Franz Schubert was familiar with the latter is likely, considering that he set four of Schubart’s poems to music, including the famous “Die Forelle.” However, as Steblin (1983, 190) states, “even composers who did not express their views on the matter might nevertheless be presumed to represent established tradition in their creative work.”
[5] It is intriguing to see how Schubart’s key characteristics relate to the music and text of “Der Doppelgänger.” Of B minor, the tonic key, Schubart (1806) states:
B minor. This is as it were the key of patience, of calm awaiting one’s fate and of submission to divine dispensation. For that reason its lament is so mild, without ever breaking out into offensive murmuring or whimpering. The use of this key is rather difficult for all instruments; therefore so few pieces are found which are expressly set in this key. (Steblin 1983, 124)
The affect of B minor, like the opening of the poem, is relatively calm, but it also foreshadows the “fate” to come. In contrast, B major represents “anger, rage, jealousy, fury, despair, and every burden of the heart”—emotions well suited for the ending of the poem (Steblin 1983, 123). The piece remains in B minor until the third stanza (measure 47), at which point it modulates, not to the dominant or relative major, but to the raised mediant. The modulation occurs at the precise moment in which the doppelgänger mocks the love-sorrows of the narrator. Based upon Schubart’s description, the choice of key could not have been more fitting:(3)
[D ] minor. Feelings of anxiety of the soul’s deepest distress, of brooding despair, of blackest depression, of the most gloomy condition of the soul. Every fear, every hesitation of the shuddering heart, breathes out of horrible [D ] minor. If ghosts could speak, their speech would approximate this key. (Steblin 1983, 122–23)
If Schubert had modulated to a different tonic, the affect of the key would have contradicted that of the poem.
Example 1. Introduction to “Der Doppelgänger,” mm. 1–4
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Example 2. Multiple implications of each dyad in mm. 1–4
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[6] Taken as a whole, the opening chord progression can be clearly heard as a half cadence (or at least an incomplete progression) in the key of B minor (see Example 1). Individually, however, none of the chords are complete, hence each dyad potentially implies more than one harmony (see Example 2). Without their thirds, the outer chords could be either major or minor triads: the first being I (B–
[7] In the first part of the poem, the narrator fills in the picture of the surroundings gradually—night, street, house, man—just as the empty chords themselves are completed slowly. In the first stanza (measures 5–24), virtually no action takes place in either the poem or the music. Most of the vocal notes which fill in the chords are set to relatively insignificant articles (e.g., die, diesem, das), and there is no harmonic development between the first and second stanzas. It is only with the appearance (in the poem) of the other man that the development of the music begins to advance. In measure 25 the voice begins on a new note, D, rather than
[8] The climax of the poem occurs at the end of the second stanza, when the narrator discovers that this other man is his double (“der Mond zeigt mir meine eig’ne Gestalt”). The revelation, in a sense, strips the narrator of his own identity, causing him to shudder (“mir graut es”). More importantly, this coincides with the first interruption of the note
[9] The relationship between the dominant and the subdominant forms one of the primary binary oppositions within the piece: one obsessively present, the other hauntingly absent. As with their poetic counterparts, the two terms are mirror images of each other, one major, the other minor. The root pitches themselves,
[10] It is a tribute to Schubert’s genius that all of the essential structural elements of “Der Doppelgänger” are contained within the opening four bars. The four-note motive B–
Example 3. Structural gap showing missing pitch C in opening motive
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Example 4. Structural gaps (missing pitches E and G)
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[11] The four-note motive, B–
[12] Although less significant than the dominant/subdominant pairing, the dual nature of the chords in the introduction also provides a complete (and circular) presentation of another binary opposition: the antithesis of major vs. minor. William Kinderman (1986, 75) suggests that in some of Schubert’s music “contrast between major and minor may represent one aspect of a more profound thematic juxtapositon suggesting the dichotomy of inward imagination and external perception.” In Heine’s poem, the latter is present in the narrator’s description of the physical house and street; the former in his remembrances of his sweetheart. Individually, each of the chords in the opening might also symbolize this opposition by implying both a major and minor triad (see Example 2). On a larger scale, the opening chord demarcates the dichotomy between the tonalities of B major and B minor. With this in mind, the succeeding chords can be interpreted as belonging to one or the other side of the major/minor wall: the second chord, because of its leading-tone
[13] Having presented (or, if you prefer, constructed) several issues in need of resolution, I would now like to pursue them through the remainder of the composition. All of the chords in the first section of the piece (measures 5–40) are derived from the pitches of the introduction and are likewise mostly incomplete within the piano part itself. One might expect the vocal line to supply the missing notes which complete the sonorities as the opening progression is repeated over and over. Nonetheless, while Schubert may have prematurely revealed the somber tenor of Heine’s poem, he defers revealing the ‘true’ quality of the opening chords as much as possible. The voice rarely enters on the downbeat thus creating the effect of a quasi-recitative, and its first entrance on the second beat of measure 5, of course, provides no additional information since the