The Use of the Augmented Sixth Chord in the Italienisches Liederbuch of Hugo Wolf

67 Pages·1971·11.836 MB·English

by  Kenneth DeLong

THE USE OF THE AUGMTSD SIXTH CHORD IN THE
ITALIENISCHES LIEDERBUCH OF HUGO WOLF
‘ A PROJECT
SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC
OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
by
Kenneth Gordon DeLong
n
June 1971

PREFACE
The songs of Hugo Wolf are frequently performed and
studied, but detailed analyses of the relationship between
the harmony and the setting of the words'^ are rare* This is
all the more surprising as it is in this area that Wolf
made his greatest contribution to the art song. Also,
c
despite the frequency of its use in the nineteenth century,
the augmented sixth chord has received little systematic
study. The purpose of this paper is to combine these two
topics under one heading, and to study - through a consideration
of the augmented sixth chords - Hugo Wolf's Italienisches
Liederbuch, and also to present something of a compendium
of typical uses for the augmented sixth chord itself. To
accomplish this, it has been necessary to include; several
introductory chapters: the first, describing the evolution
of the late nineteenth century art song; the second,
introducing the Italienisches Liederbuch; and the third,
summarizing the historical development of the augmented
sixth chord. The heart of the study is in the fourth and
final chapter.
iii
NINETEENTH-CENTURY ART SONG
AND HUGO WOLF •
Although Max FriedlSnder has argued that the nineteenth-
century art song (lied) is new neither in principle nor in
technique, any discussion of it must start with the early
nineteenth-century and the central position of Schuhert,
for it is only with him that the '* song ” is truly established
as a respectable and important art form.^ Schubert’s six
hundred or more songs provide the locus classicus for the art
song, and give the form its first clear definition. Because
of the vairiety of song forms present in Schubert’s works,
general principles are difficult to formulate, but it is
necessary to attempt such a formulation if an understanding
of Hugo Wolf’s position is to be achieved. Judging from the
quantity he wrote, the strophic song was Schubert’s favorite
form, and it remained the dominant song form for much of the
century* Important tp this type of song is its melody,
usually flowing in ch^acter, symmetrically phrased, and often
Of the folk-song type. These melodies are designed to fit
^Max FriedlSnder, Das deutsche Lied im 18. Jahrhundert.
(Leipzig: 1902)
2
easily with the poetic meter of the poem, and usually
capture in lyric fashion some essential feeling conveyed
by the poem as a whole. This feeling is frequently enhanced
by the piano accompaniment which complements the mood,
often by reflecting some important poetic image in the piano
figuration. The songs from his Die schgne Mailerin are
»
largely of this kind, with the *' water image in evidence
in the piano accompaniment. Among the different song types,
the strophic song is both simple and strong, and it remained
a favorite of all the great song composers of the century,
including Schumann, Brahms, auid even Wolf,
A problem with the strophic form does arise, however,
when the poem involved contains striking changes within it
that require corresponding changes in the music. To accomo
date this difficulty, Schubert wrote songs containing clearly
differentiated sections, and, more important, developed the
through-composed (durchkomponiert) song - that'is, a song
whose musical form is largely determined by the form of the
poem. Characteristic of Schubert's through-composed songs is
his dramatic and rhetorical musical setting of the text,
which often abandons smooth melody in favor of declaimed
arioso. Among the songs of this type can be found some of
, Schubert's greatest masterpieces, songs such as Die .iunge
Nonne* Dej. Atlas, and, especially. Per Doppelggngfir - a song
remarkably " Wolfian " in technique, if not in effect. The
important feature of the through-composed song is the
relationship of music to words, and it is this new relationship
3
that is crucial to the development of the Late Romantic song*
The increasing promindnce of the through-composed song - and
the artistic ideal it represents - reflects the growing
pressure exerted by literature upon all branches of the arts
during the second half of the nineteenth century* Gradually
the role of the words became the dominant element in a song,
dominant in the sense that the purpose of the music became one
of heightening the feelings and meanings expressed in the
poem. In this new approach to song writing, the composer was
primarily interested in conveying to the listener the exact
nuance of each verbal phrase by the shape of the vocal line,
while the piano underlined the moods emd atmosphere that the
words evoked* Musically these changes can be seen in the
emergence of the piano-dominated song, and the abandoning of
the closed-form vocal line*
Robert Schumann represents a midv/ay point in this changing
attitude* His songs are often strophic and contain clearly
constructed melodies, but there is frequently an expanded role
for the piano* The piano tends to add coimter-melodies to
the vocal line, and to comment ” musically in the form of
preludes and postludes* With Schumann, the mood aspect is
often the crucial thing, and it is to the piano accompaniment
that he turns to gain‘/the desired end* Songs such as Mondnacht
and Frglingsnacht derive much of their effectiveness from the
evocative nature of the piano parts*
Thus, in the late nineteenth century, two general song-
types emerge — both containing an'expanded role for the piano*
One is the mood song, enriched by ** romantic ” harmony.
4
deriving largely from Schumann; the other is the through-
composed song, now even more text-oriented than in Schubert
and Schumann. After the Wagnerian wave washed over Europe,
these tendencies merged, creating a distinct Late Romantic
style that is epitomised in the works of Richard Strauss,
Mahler, and Hugo Wolf. To borrow a phrase from Leonard B.
Meyer, the Early Romantic song is essentially ” formalist ”
or ** expressionist ”; the Late Romantic song is " referential-
ist ”, whether as mood or as drama. Put another way, an
Early Romantic composer inspired by a poem wanted to transform
it into a song; a Late Romantic composer wished something
else: to guide the listener toward the heart of the poem by
the evocative powers of music. It was the adoption of the
Wagnerian harmonic idiom that was crucial to this change, and
it is with this feature - especially the relationship of
harmony to the expression of the text - that this paper is
concerned.
Even in a century filled with composers of pronounced
individuality, Hugo Wolf (1860-1903) stands out as an exceed
ingly strange and enigmatic figure. Starting with his
difficulties v/ith Latin in grammar school, and continuing
with his expulsion from the Vienna Academy of Music, his early
career reads like a catalogue of misfortune and unhappiness,
usually brought upon himself by his erratic and irritable
personality. Most of his adult life was spent in and around
Vienna, where he supported himself by teaching, writing
^Leonard B. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music, (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1959) P* 17.
5
nusical criticism, and by the generosity of a few \mderstanding
friends. Wolf's first years in Vienna coincided with the famous
Brahms-Wagner controversy, and Wolf threw all his efforts into
supporting the Wagnerian cause. His influence grew sizably when
I
in l88[j. he became music critic of the Wiener Salonblatt. a
fashionable Viennese newspaper of the time. During the years
V/olf vjrote for the paper (l881f«85), his biting criticism and
considerable capacity for musical invective quickly gained him
a reputation both as a strongly partisan supporter of V/agner and
an equally violent hater of Brahms* In due course, the predomi
nantly conservative and Brahmsian-dorainated musical establishment
of Vienna achieved its revenge by consistently ridiculing V/olf *s
composiuions and hindering their publication and performance.
By 1890, however, Wolf had established himself as a composer in
Vienna and had over one himdred of his songs published. During
the 1890*3 he completed his opera Per Corregidor. the Italian
Serenade for string orchestra (also string quartet), and the
Italienisches Liederbuch, By I897 his health was failing, and in
September of that year he showed unmistakable signs of insanity
and was committed to an asylum where he remained until his death.
Although songs appear among his earliest works. Wolf orig
inally did not intend to become primarily a song composer. Among
his first works are a string quartet in D minor which is Beethoven
like in intent if Schubertian in effect, Ohere is also a large
symphonic poem in the Lisztian manner called Penthesilea after
the poem by Heinrich von Kleist, By I888 he had “found himself"
as a song composer and started producing the sorts of song which
/
form the basis of his 2»^putation, In composing his songs. Wolf
6
considered only one poet at a time, totally immersing himself
in the poet's works, Vftien the spirit moved him, he composed
with great intensity and speed, often producing up to three
songs in a single day, VJhen the mood left him, he remained
fallow for long stretches of time, unable to compose anything
at all. His songs are grouped into collections according to
the author of the poems in the following way: 53 songs on poems
of Eduard Morike (I889), 20 on Josef von Eichendorff (1889),
51 on J,W, von Goethe (I89O), the Spanisches Liederbuch (ijii. songs
on poems translated from the Spanish by Paul von Heyse and Sbianuel
i. >
Geibel), and the Italienisches Liederbuch (ij.6 songs on poems
translated fr<ma Italian by Heyse), Ihree songs on poems by
Michelangelo written before the onslaught of insanity complete
his contribution to song literature. Each group contains a
certain unity within a fundamentally diversified style. The
Morike songs, for exan5)le, are by and large the most traditional
and Schumann-influenced, and include many atrophic melody-
accompaniment vrorks. The Goethe volume is in a much different vein,
and shov7 Wolf at his most intellectual and psychologically pene
trating frame of mind. This set contains many of Wolf's master
pieces; most are, however, difficult to understand. The Italian
songs represent, taken as a group, the summit of Wolf's achievement
as a song writer. They contain a wide range of moods and a corres
pondingly wide range of musical techniques, and were for this
reason chosen as the basis for this study.
7
?
I
!
t
the italisnisghbs libderbuch
The Italienieohes Liederhucli is the last large collection
of songs that Wolf wrote. It consAsts of a total of i{.6 songs,
divided into two parts containing 22 and 21^. songs each, Althou^
there was a gap of nearly five years between the composition
i. >
of each set, there is a remarkable unity of style and technique
in the two sections. The title comes from a collection of
i
anonymous Italian poems translated into German by Paul von
Heyse, Included among them are translations of rispetti and
velote. typical, forms found in Italian folk poetry, and it is
from these types of poems that Wolf chose the texts for his
songs. Prank Walker offers the following description of a
rispetto; "The rispetto may be described as a sort .of intellectual
exorcise for lovers in verse that is mocking, gallant or passion
ate, It employs an end-stopped ten- or eleven-syllabled line,
and is invariably quite short,
Love is the subject of most of the poems that V/olf uses,
\
and in these songs this most timeless of topics is viewed in a
variety of ways. In translation, and particularly in Wolf's
settings, the poems are sometimes given a more serious cast
p»29k-
Prank Walker: Hugo Wolf, New York: Alfred Knopf, 1951*
I
V