Before I take you out of the vale or vail or veil of depression, I want to bring you back to Franz Schubert’s Die Winterreise. It is 24 songs, based on poems by the now obscure Wilhelm Müller (Bill Miller in English, just like Giuseppe Verdi is Joe Green in English). The traveler, like Schubert himself, was tormented by love and set out on a winter journey to nowhere in particular looking for meaning in life, but not very hard. He could easily have seen things that might have uplifted him, but he looked only for what was depressing.
You can listen to samples of Die Winterreise at Amazon.
The first song begins in D minor, with a marchlike rhythm. I paraphrase the wanderer: “You maiden, you said you loved me, your Mom even talked about you marrying me. And now? I will set out on a journey through the forest, through moon-shadows and along deer tracks. So why should I stay here? Dogs are growling all around your house!” Then he grew momentarily philosophical: “Love ever loves to wander, from one to another; God has made it so.” But he has not convinced himself. He cannot resist saying, Fein liebchen, Gute nacht! Dear lover, good night! Then Schubert switched to D major. The traveler said, in paraphrase, “I will not disturb you, but upon your doorpost I write, Good night! When you wake up you will see that I was thinking of you.” Without this last stanza in a tender major key (although the song ends in minor), there would have been no journey. Otherwise it would just have been, She doesn’t love me, ah nuts, I’ll just go somewhere else. But because he could not stop loving the unnamed Mädchen, he does not go somewhere else, but wanders aimlessly.
Then he gets really depressed. Song 2: He sees the weathervane over the woman’s house; the wind blows it in all directions, just like her fickle soul. Song 3: Frozen Tears. Song 4: Chill.
Then in Song 5 he finds the linden tree (this is the only song in this set that has gained independent fame, and the only one that Schubert’s friends liked) in whose smooth bark he and his lover had carved their initials, I suppose, the previous summer. In E major, the tree lures the wanderer to commit suicide and rest forever in the pleasant shade. But the wanderer loved his depression so much that he kept going. The song begins and ends in E major, with periods of E minor in the middle, as the traveler is tortured by memories of lost love.
The traveler runs as fast as he can, but cannot help looking back (Song 8). He sees mists and thinks they are ghosts (Song 9). He rests in someone’s cabin, and awakens to see intricate leaves carved by frost on the window, and imagines himself in a springtime of life—ha, you laugh at the dreamer who saw flowers in winter? (Song 11) He hears a posthorn, and thinks maybe there is a letter for him, then he remembers that nobody knows where he is (Song 13). He awakens with frost on his head and thinks, Ah! I have gray hair! I’m old and I can die soon! (Song 14) A crow follows him as if he is about to die (Song 15, the most splendid minute of music ever written). He passes a graveyard, and thinks it is a hotel (Song 21). He has a brief moment of courage (Song 22), then sees the sun and two sundogs and thinks about his fate (Song 23).
And then he finds his purpose in life. What is it? It is something that Solomon also discovered in Ecclesiastes. No, not God. I’ll tell you what it is later, unless you want to go find a CD with Die Winterreise on it and find out.
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