Der Drang zum Gesang: On Goethe's Dramatic Form

JANE K. BROWN Der Drang zum Gesang: On Goethe's Dramatic Form Denn es muß von Herzen gehen, Was auf Herzen wüken soU. Faust II, 9685-86 THESE UNES OF MEPHISTOPHELES identify explicitly the subjective, i.e. emotional, function of music—for Goethe's drama as for the age.1 Associated here in Act III of Faust II with the tum away from classical drama, music comes from the heart and works upon it. It would be hard to quibble with this characterization from the mouth of the master himself, whether for his masterpiece of high Romanticism or for his earUest Singspiele of the 1770s, in which characters burst into song to elaborate emotions they have just expressed Ui prose.2 WhUe I don't precisely Uitend to quibble, any statement as seemingly obvious as this one deserves to be rethought. Goethe himself, after aU, demonstrated Ui Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre how readUy any generaUzation can be transformed into its opposite. Consider, therefore, the foUowing observation: a large proportion of successful settings of poems by Goethe are of baUads, and Goethe's baUads are characterized not by subjectivity, but on the contrary by an extreme objectivity—by the perverse tendency for almost anything other than a human subject to become the central actor. In "Die wandelnde Glocke," for example, a church beU chases after an errant chüd, and Ui "Erlkönig" the wind takes on voice and body. To what extent, then, might this cuché about the subjectivity of music, Uke every other generaüzation with which Goethe came m contact, be turned on its head? The foUowing analysis of Goethe's use of music Ui drama wiU show that music has less to do with subjectivity per se than with the objectivity of form that characterizes his mature drama and that, as a result, the conventional distinction between opera and Sprechdrama is irrelevant for him. Goethe's operettas of the 1770s are actuaUy dramas with inserted songs; indeed, the two earUest, Erwin und Elmire (1773-75, publ. 1775) and Claudine von Villa Bella (1774-75, publ. 1776), were originaUy designated "Schauspiel mit Gesang," a term apparently pioneered by Goethe.3 The other three texts of this group—Lila (YIl6-11, 116 Jane K. Brown 1778, 1788, publ. 1790), Jery und Bätely (1779, publ. 1790), and Die Fischerin (1781, publ. 1782)—of which the latter two are subtitled "Singspiel," contain simUar admixtures of prose and inserted songs. But the genre designations obscure a more interesting set of differences among the texts. Die Fischerin is closest to the least formal or operatic sub-genre of Singspiel, baUad opera. Properly speaking, baUad opera is a prose text with inserted songs sung to the tune of popular ballads; Goethe Uteralized the concept by making vütuaUy aU the inserted songs baUads taken from Herder's Volkslieder (or his own adaptations, as Ui the case of the first and most famous, "Erlkönig"). The two "Schauspiele mit Gesang," Erwin und Elmire and Claudine von Villa Bella, mix inserted songs with arias Ui the style of comic opera. Most operatic, with fuU musical finales, are Lila and Jery und Bätely. Goethe thus practices over a range that extends from drama with inserted songs to almost entirely through-composed opera. This generic progression is particularly interesting Ui the context of the connection between music and emotion. In Die Fischerin the characters sing to estabUsh their moods or express theü feelings—the most extended musical passage expresses everyone's fear that the heroine has drowned. Since much of the music is to baUads whose text is somewhat opaque, the music seems to express not only inner feelings , but the barely articulated or barely conscious subjectivity of early Romanticism. In the two Schauspiele mit Gesang, the characters sing to express emotions of which they are fuUy aware; the music thus expresses an expücitiy acknowledged subjectivity. In Lila, however, with its fuU operatic finale, we have a shift. It progresses from a first act with no music through increasing amounts of music m the second and thüd acts to a final act with practicaUy no unaccompanied dialogue. In this odd Uttie work the heroine...