Das Dorfchen and the 'unsinnsgesellschaft': Schubert's Elise

Musical Times, Spring 1999 by Steblin, Rita

Although Schubert's name does not appear on the membership list attached to the first newsletter dated 17 April 1817, the second surviving newsletter, dated 25 September 1817, announces that the nonsense club was about to begin rehearsing a drama with choruses and stage machinery written to a text by Josef Kupelwieser entitled 'Feuergeist' [Fire Spirit]. The picture painted to illustrate a production of this work for the society's first birthday party on 18 April 1818 - with the magic harpist flying in for the rescue implies that 'Feuergeist' was an early version of 'Die Zauberharfe' (D.644), and consequently that Schubert composed the music for both works. This would date Schubert's active involvement with the club from at least the late summer of 1817. Thus, chronological evidence also supports the hypothesis that Schubert wrote 'Entzuckung eines Laura's Abschied', dated August 1817, in connection with the 'Unsinnsgesellschaft'.

In September 1817, the month of Dorflinger's wedding, Schubert set as Lieder the Schiller texts 'Gruppe aus dem Tartarus' (D.583), about the eternal torments suffered by the damned in the underworld, and 'Elysium' (D.584), about the pleasures in paradise. These songs have been assigned adjacent Deutsch numbers.20 The two texts belong together and were in fact published by Schiller as a related pair. In 1813, while studying with Salieri, Schubert had already set selected lines from both poems, as the trios and canons D.51, 53, 54, 57, 58, 60 and 65. The opening lines of these two poems are quoted in fig.7. The words with which 'Elysium' begins, 'Away with the groaning moaning! Elysium's pleasure feasts drown out every Ach', are obviously the answer to the heavy groans, the tormented 'Ach', of 'Gruppe aus dem Tartarus'. Schubert, having earlier set various lines of the two poems, was of course aware of their textual relationship. It is hard to imagine the solemn Tartarus as anything but serious in purpose. Set in C Major for low voice, it has entered the canon as a gripping masterpiece of dramatic power. Schubert himself selected this Lied to be published in 1823 as the first part of his op.24, the second part consisting of 'Schlummerlied' (D.527) composed in January 1817 on a text by Johann Mayrhofer. This second Lied can also be interpreted as dealing with the subject of death, the boy in the poem having been lulled into eternal sleep, healed of all pain, in the arms of nature. Op. 24 has, surprisingly, no dedicatee.

'Elysium', on the other hand, is scarcely known and remained unpublished upon Schubert's death. It is much lighter in style, befitting the text, and consists of a virtuoso display of programmatic devices. The last strophe of this multisectioned work begins with faithful couples embracing and kissing on the green velvet meadows and ends in the last line with the celebration of an eternal wedding feast. Schubert's treatment of the word 'ewig' [eternal] clinches the burlesque-type purpose of this Lied. The word is stretched out for an incredible ten bars! (fig.8). The passage is in fact virtually unsingable.21 This humorous writing - an exaggerated form of wordpainting sounds like an inside joke, suitable for members of the 'Unsinnsgesellschaft'. This was, after all, their specialty: taking serious texts and making up parodies.