Friday, 12 October 2012

Fritz Wunderlich, Romanticism and Die Schöne Müllerin

Fritz Wunderlich died aged only 35, an age when many singers are only just getting into their prime. His Schubert Die Schöne Müllerin is a classic because his voice is so beautiful that it sounds melodic, whatever he might be singing. For that reeason I keep coming back to it, even if it's more exquisite than profound. Hear it in full here.  

The trouble with Romanticism is that people assume it's "romantic" like maudlin Victorian sentimentality. But the Romantics weren't like that at all.  Just as the French Revolution marked an alternative to absolute power, Romanticism inspired emphasis on the individual, not the state, emotional depth as opposed to classical detachment. Ideas and feelings didn't come from "above" but from personal committment and understanding. Without Romanticism would the revolutions of 1848 have been such a watershed? Would the modern world be what it is, (and not in a narrow sense).

Understand Romanticism and you understand Lieder, I think. All good artists create anew: bad artists copy (even if it makes them successful). In the Romantic ethos, art is valid when it's created with integrity and engagement. Machines can't do art. Every genuine artist seeks "truth", grown from an understanding of poet/composer, but also from personal input. That's why listening is so exciting. Over 40 plus years I've heard hundreds of  Die Schöne Müllerin yet can't ever get enough. There's so much to it that there will always be new perspectives. Every performer is an individual, and every listener too, and each experience is coloured by the moment in which it's heard. Fritz Wunderlich never did get old, so we don't know how he might have been singing it aged 45 or 55.  The world has changed a lot in 50 years since Wunderlich made his recording, so I treasure it as a moment crystallized in time.

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