Gay
Lieder *
by
John Lauritsen
Opera
queens are not in short supply, but gay men who love Lieder
seem to be few and far between. The German word Lied (plural
Lieder) simply
means “song”. But it
has acquired a
particular association, especially among English speakers: the
Romantic German art song. Mozart and Beethoven may be considered the
earliest composers of Lieder,
though
the genre only came into
its own with Franz Schubert, followed by Robert Schumann, Johannes
Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss, and others.
The
words in Lieder
are as important as
the music, and the piano
contribution is as important as the vocal. The best Lieder
represent a union of a great poet and a great composer. Ideally
everything comes together — the story being narrated, the
sound
and imagery of the poetry, the vocal line, the character conveyed by
the singer, and the piano accompaniment. The best Lieder
singers, while not stiff, use gestures very sparingly, if at all. The
words and music are sufficient. A Lieder
recital is intimate,
best heard in a small hall or in the home. This is very different
from opera, where action and scenery are part of the experience. To
fully appreciate an opera, one needs to see it — in an opera
house, in a DVD movie (most of which are badly directed and
photographed), or at least in one's imagination.
There
are a few Lieder
in which male love
plays a part. However, a
disclaimer: there can be a gay response to Lieder that are
ostensibly or even entirely heterosexual, as there can to many
operas. For example, Schubert's great song cycle, Die Schöne
Müllerin (the beautiful miller maid), is about an
intense
and naïve young man who falls in love with a girl, woos her,
wins her, loses her, and then commits suicide by drowning himself. It
is almost unbearably beautiful and tragic. My response, and I imagine
that of other gay men, is both to identify with the poor boy and to
try to help him. “It's only a woman,” we want to
tell
him, but to no avail. In the end the brook sings a lullaby to the
youth who is cradled in its depths. My favorite recording of Die
Schöne Müllerin is by the Danish tenor,
Aksel Schøtz,
accompanied by Gerald Moore — but there is also a fine 1961
performance by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, also accompanied by Gerald
Moore. Both are currently available on CDs.
One
of the greatest of all Lieder
is
Schubert's second setting of
a poem by Goethe, An den
Mond (To
The Moon, D 296, composed in
1777 and published in 1789). At its heart, Goethe's poem is about
romantic male friendship, a friendship which, though not overtly
erotic, does not exclude sex. From at least the mid-18th century,
“friend” has been a code word for the lover of
another
male, especially in Germany. When the homosexual rights movement
began there in the late 19th century, periodicals sprang up with such
titles as Der Freund and Freundschaft
und Freiheit. The
first known American gay periodical was the short-lived Friendship
and Freedom, started by the German-American Henry Gerber in
the
mid-1920s.
In
the second stanza, the gentle eye of his friend watches over the
narrator's fate. Below, my own translations follow the German.
An
den Mond, later version, 2nd stanza:
Breitest
über mein Gefild
Lindernd
deinen Blick,
Wie
des Freundes Auge mild
Über
mein Geschick.
Over
my domain you spread
Your
soothing gaze,
Like
the gentle eye of a friend
Upon
my fate.
After
an emotionally turbulent middle section, difficult to paraphrase, we
come to the last two stanzas, which are unmistakably about male love,
poignantly and mysteriously portrayed. To ordinary people (Menschen),
this kind of love is unknown or something they don't wish to think
about. The fortunate man is one who, in confidence and serenity, can
exclude the world and enjoy the nocturnal companionship of his
friend.
Ibid.,
last two stanzas:
Selig,
wer sich vor der Welt
Ohne
Haß verschließt,
Einen
Freund am Busen hält
Und
mit dem genießt,
Was,
von Menschen nicht gewußt
Oder
nicht bedacht,
Durch
das Labyrinth der Brust
Wandelt
in der Nacht.
Blessed
is he, who free from hate
Shuts
out the world,
To
his bosom holds a friend
And
with him enjoys,
That
which, by common folk not known
Or
not thought about,
Through
the labyrinth of the breast
Wanders
in the night.
In
an earlier version of An
den Mond,
homoeroticism is more
overt. Here it is explicitly a man
clasped to another man's
bosom; now ordinary people may even despise the love that two men
share. Following are the final two stanzas, followed by my own
translation:
An
Den Mond (Earlier version)
Selig,
wer sich vor der Welt
Ohne
Haß verschließt,
Einen
Mann am Busen hält
Und
mit dem genießt,
Was
dem Menschen unbewußt
Oder
wohl veracht
Durch
das Labyrinth der Brust
Wandelt
in der Nacht.
Blessed
is he, who free from hate
Shuts
out the world,
To
his bosom holds a man
And
with him enjoys,
That
which, by common folk unknown
Or
even despised,
Through
the labyrinth of the breast
Wanders
in the night.
There
are not many recordings of this Lied,
perhaps because male
singers find the homoeroticism embarrassing. I heard it for the first
time over twenty years ago, in a recording by Dietrich
Fischer-Dieskau, accompanied by Gerald Moore at the piano (Deutsche
Grammophon LP 2530 229). Tears streamed down my face, as he sang the
final two stanzas. Later I acquired another recording (Deutsche
Grammophon CD 457 747-2), in which Fischer-Dieskau was accompanied by
his close friend, the Austrian pianist Jörg Demus.
Recently
I got still another recording of the Schubert Goethe-Lieder
(London CD 452 917-2), this one by the young baritone, Matthias
Goerne, accompanied by Andreas Haefliger. If I thought I had already
expended my emotions over this Lied,
I was wrong. Goerne, who
was a student of Fischer-Dieskau, sang it very slowly, with the final
two stanzas in a piano to pianissimo range, almost as though it were
a prayer. His voice is very beautiful; his pianissimo and his breath
control are unrivalled by any singer I have ever heard.
A
very different Lied
is Der Soldat
(the soldier),
composed by Robert Schumann in 1840 (opus 40, number 3) from a poem
by Hans Christian Andersen, which was freely translated from Danish
into German by the poet Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838). The poem
is stark, tragic, and unambiguously about love between two soldiers.
My
translation below may seem a bit strange in its metrics, but I did it
to conform to Schumann's music. With minor changes to a few note
values, my translation can be sung to his music. Almost fortuitously
I ended up with partial rhymes in the a b a b pattern. (Chamisso's
translation has full rhymes in the a a b b pattern.)
The
Soldier
It's
done to the sound of muffled drums;
How
far yet the place! How long the way!
Oh,
were he at rest and all were done!
I
feel my heart will break.
I
have in the world loved only him,
Loved
him, who now to his death is led.
With
martial band they'll parade him,
For
this I also am commandeered.
Now
gazes he for the final time
On
the joyous light of the sun in heaven,
Now
they blindfold his eyes —
May
God grant you eternal rest.
And
now nine men have taken aim;
Eight
bullets go wide of the mark.
They
all were shaking from anguish and pain —
But
I ... I hit ... I hit him right in the heart.
We
can only surmise why the soldier is being executed. The sympathy of
the men in the firing squad suggest that his offense was nothing
shameful. In the 1830s, when Andersen wrote his poem, the death
penalty for sex between males was still on the books in Denmark, but
in practice no one for decades had been executed for any crime except
murder. (This is in sharp contrast to England,where
gay men were still regularly being hanged up to 1834.)
The
Lied is in a march
tempo marked “nicht
zu langsam”
(not too slow). The piano accompaniment simulates the muffled drums
of the first line, and then in two interludes, provides a harsh and
even brutal statement of its own.
Der
Soldat is not often sung or recorded; even a
Dietrich
Fischer-Dieskau recording of 61 Schumann Lieder
does not
include it. The two CD recordings I did find are both excellent,
though quite different. One is by Thomas Hampson, accompanied by
Geoffrey Parsons (Robert Schumann Lieder,
Teldec
2292-44935-2). His rendering is virile, declamatory and somewhat
operatic. The soldier's heart may be breaking, but there is no doubt
that he is disciplined and doing his duty. He projects anger, pride,
bitterness, defiance. When Hampson sings, “Ich hab' in der
Welt nur ihn geliebt, nur ihn, dem jetzt man den Tod doch
giebt”
(“I have in the world loved only him, only him, who is now
being put to death”) he does so forte, with a defiant
pride and no apologies for his love. When he describes the shaking of
the other men on the firing squad, it is with contempt — they
are weaklings, whereas he himself has the guts to terminate the
suffering of his lover. Only in the last line, when the phrase breaks
— and Schumann repeats some of the words — does the
soldier lose control of his emotions.
Another
CD is by Matthias Goerne, accompanied by Eric Schneider (Schumann
Lieder, Decca
475-6012). Goerne is
also a soldier, but a more
sensitive and vulnerable one. The heartbreak is felt throughout the
song, rather than mostly in the final line. I especially recommend
this CD, as it includes a fine selection of Schumann Lieder,
some very familiar, but others relatively unknown.
Matthias Goerne
Last
April Matthias Goerne gave a recital at Queen Elizabeth Hall in
London, in which he sang two song cycles that are always sung by
women: Schumann's Frauenliebe
und Leben
(Woman's Love and
Life) and Wagner's Wesendonck Songs. No one seems to object when
female singers interpret songs that tell a story from a man's
viewpoint. But sauce for the goose isn't sauce for the gander, at
least for some of the male London critics, who found all sorts of
things to quibble about: Goerne's voice was too low, his
interpretations were too bland, he was “making a
statement”,
it was the “Brokeback Mountain dimension”, and so
on.
Goerne's former teacher, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, denounced the
project in advance as “ridiculous, stupid and
wrong”. On
the other hand, Melanie Eskenazi, who considers Goerne the greatest
Lieder singer who
is still
performing, loved it, and concluded
by saying, “A tremendous recital: none of these works will
ever
sound the same again.”
Hans Christian Andersen
Last
year was the bicentennial of the birth of Hans Christian Andersen,
who in Europe and Scandinavia is regarded as a major figure in the
Romantic Movement — an important novelist, dramatist and
poet,
as well as the author of fairy tales. The centennial was marked by an
exceptionally fine biography by Jens Andersen (Hans Christian
Andersen: a new life, Overlook Duckworth 2005), brilliantly
translated from the Danish by Tina Nunnally. Although Andersen was
sufficiently discreet that the specific details of his sex life are
unknown, there is no doubt that he was gay — consciously and
openly. In fact, this was known to the German gay movement over a
hundred years ago. Tina Nunnally also has done splendid new
translations of thirty of Andersen's greatest stories (Hans Christian
Andersen, Fairy Tales,
Viking 2005),
which are by no means
written only for children.
In
1844 Andersen travelled to Leipzig, where he visited Robert and Clara
Schumann, who held a home recital of the five Andersen poems that
Schumann had put to music in 1840. Not only were poet and composer
present, but the singer, Livia von Frege, was
accompanied by Clara Schumann, the greatest woman pianist of the 19th
century. One can only imagine what the two ladies made of Der
Soldat.
Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe
Homoerotic
elements can be found in other Lieder
poems by Goethe, who
once said that he considered his poems incomplete until they had been
set to music. One of them, Ganymed,
is about the abduction of
a beautiful youth by Zeus, father of the gods. It is a highly
mystical and ambiguous poem, in which creator and creation, lover and
beloved, seem to merge together. The setting by Schubert is lovely,
but the one by Hugo Wolf (composed 21 October 1889) far surpasses it
for drama and eroticism. The performance of this Lied by the
famous Irish tenor, John McCormack, was considered one of his finest.
Not everyone cares for the quality of McCormack's voice, which is
perhaps more suitable for the songs of Thomas Moore or Stephen
Foster, but his total conviction and superb enunciation carry the
day.
The
poem for one lovely Lied,
Morgen (morning)
— set
to music by Richard Strauss in 1893-94 — was written by John
Henry Mackay, who was an important writer in the early homosexual
rights movement. In the early years of the 20th century Mackay
published, under the pen name Sagitta, a series of polemics on behalf
of what he called “nameless love”. These were
suppressed
by the authorities in 1909, but then issued clandestinely by him in
1913. In 1924 he published a novel, Der
Puppenjunge (The
Hustler), which vividly describes the hustling scene in Berlin of the
1920s. There are old but very beautiful performances of Morgen
by the soprano Elisabeth Schumann and by the tenor Leo Slezak.
RECORDINGS:
For an introduction to Lieder
in
general, I would recommend
recordings of Die
Schöne Müllerin by
Aksel Schøtz
or Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1961) — recordings of Die
Winterreise (The
Winter
Journey) by Gerhard Hüsch, Hans
Hotter, or Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1961) — the Goethe-Lieder
recordings by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau or Matthias Goerne —
the
Schumann Lieder
recording by Matthias
Goerne — any of
Elisabeth Schumann's recordings of Lieder
by Schubert, Brahms,
Wolf, or Strauss.
# # #
*
This article appeared (under
the title “The Lieder and Homoerotic Love”) in the
September-October
2006 issue of the Gay &
Lesbian Review.
Please check out my books: Pagan Press BOOKLIST — John Lauritsen
Back to Gay Liberation.
Home