gretchen at the spinning wheel meaning

In order to facilitate the encounter Faust gives Margarete a sleeping potion to administer to her mother, thus allowing the beast with two backs its uninhibited and noisy delights. A competent singer and a competent pianist can usually turn in a pleasant performance. We have thus arrived at the source of the turmoil in her life: lust. For the moment Faust should just be content with leaving a gift in her room. Margarete still thinks the treasure cannot have been come by honestly, but, confronted by these wonderful jewels, her resistance has faded. The name 'Mephistopheles' is an invention of Goethe's. Were he to … Margarete, in contrast, speaks to us with the voice of a 'simple, ignorant child'. The two great Schubert/Goethe masterpieces Gretchen am Spinnrade (Op. Schubert Still Resonates. The scene changes to a street, where we find Mephistopheles and Faust in conversation. When I don't have him, that is like a grave to me, the whole world is bitter for me. 1) were given individual opus numbers. Faust orders Mephistopheles to get another, more valuable treasure and to involve Margarete's neighbour and friend, Martha, as an innocent go-between in the seduction. A smooth legato doesn't cut the mustard here. You can see why they got to the top of their profession. The song's dramatic punch and bold innovations still reverberate today. God says that he will soon intervene and lead Faust back to clarity. Image: source. Her monologue makes it apparent what Mephistopheles and Faust have done to her – how far she has fallen to a deep point from which there can be no way back. In this scene, Gretchen is sitting alone in her room at the spinning wheel after her lover Faust abandoned her and made a pact with the devil, Mephistopheles. Gretchen's Chamber. Gretchen am Spinnrade is a strophic poem, yet Schubert rearranged the order of each strophe so that he could illustrate and extend the drama between Faust and Gretchen. The singer is posted next to the piano in a nice frock, is concentrating on enunciation and a smooth melodic line. She stands at the mirror, trying on the necklace, earrings and brooches. After some further scenes Mephistopheles takes Faust to a witches' kitchen, where he drinks a magic potion that makes him younger and attractive to every woman. [4] After some discussion Mephistopheles proposes a pact: Mephistopheles will serve Faust and bring all his wishes to fulfilment, but as soon as Mephistopheles succeeds in making him contented and happy, capable even of idleness, Faust's soul will be his, he will die and have to serve Mephistopheles in Hell. It is an enduring and, in the end, unanswerable question: how many songs did Franz Schubert compose? Wearing it openly would be impossible. In this particular scene, a scene from Goethe's drama Faust, Gretchen is at her spinning-wheel troubled by her feelings for Faust, a man she just met and barely knows. ... Moth to Lamplight: A Tribute to Nada Surf Black Box Theory Within this one piece, there are officially two characters which play into the music directly: The spinning wheel and Gretchen. The accompaniment mimics the whirr of the spinning wheel with constant sixteenth notes played in the right hand while the left hand portrays the treadle pedal. For this purpose he will bring Faust and Martha will invite Margarete. Franz Xaver Simm, (1853-1918): Faust and Margarete in the garden. It was finally published in 1821, seven years after its composition. The 'God and Mephistopheles' theme in Faust is reminiscent of its analogue in the Biblical Book of Job, which reaches back to a very early conception of Satan as the 'angel gone wrong'. Marthe's Garden. We now only need a paragraph or two to follow the plot from there to its catastrophic conclusion. Never ever . I won't linger over the various mediocre performances there are: nice voices, nice frocks – but no Schoos. If the performers approach it as just another song without appreciating its context, mediocre is all their performance will ever be. All her thoughts fall to Faust: his poise, nobility, and fascinating words. ', following it with a long vocal pause while the wheel rumbles on. The piano plays a key role of its own in the song. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic. What is pure imagination and what reality is here nearly impossible to differentiate. The whole world. You can adjust your cookie choices in those tools at any time. He is tormented by desire. CC LEWIS Under Construction welcome film theatre commercial web design photography music things i do contact welcome film theatre commercial web design photography Gretchen am Spinnrade Alt ernative. As they talk in the garden Faust learns even more of Margarete's piety and humility. Putting the lovestruck girl at a spinning-wheel is a stroke of Goethe's genius, creating a metaphor for her state of mind: restless, disturbed, seething with longing and sexual passion. Martha tells her not to take it to her mother this time. The excisions and emendations he makes in adapting texts to music are evidence enough for that. One of my worst memories is being seated on a wheelchair at the emergency room of the Institute of Mental Health (IMH). Recycle whenever possible. Gretchen, a.k.a. Gretchen am Spinnrade allein." This information is shared with social media, sponsorship, analytics, and other vendors or service providers. You have been warned! Directed by Magdalena Chmielewska. Image: source. When Faust hears that he is required to give false witness of the death of Martha's husband he briefly refuses, but Mephistopheles easily persuades him. Martha, the new widow, makes advances at Mephistopheles while Faust and Margarete become ever closer. Only reluctantly after that does the motion of the piano resume. My calm is gone. Margarete turns up and shows her the second box of treasure. At this point in the play Goethe wants to show how totally besotted with Faust Margarete has become. 2) My calm is gone. He caught the build up of passion over the three sections and set the climax at Und ach, sein Kuß!, 'and, oh, his kiss! Note: Goethe did not split the final eight lines into two stanzas prior to 1828. Now we see Gretchen alone in her room, sitting at her spinning wheel. She would like to know whether he is still alive. Taking a first step down the slippery slope, she interprets the self-assured forwardness as a sign of aristocratic breeding rather than the behaviour of a geeky, sex-starved philosopher with a demonic love-potion inside him. Faust accepts the offer. Faust and Gretchen retreat to the pavilion and kiss, but are interrupted by Mephistopheles, who tells Faust it is time to leave. A number of musicologists have written about the musical complexities of the piece: its overlaid rhythms, its subtle stretchings and compressions, its unexpected harmonies. My heart so heavy. . In the present text we have to make do with the delicacy of Margarete's. Martha's husband has gone missing in Italy. Margarete could perhaps keep the jewels at Martha's house and just come over to wear them there in secret. In October 1814, Schubert was a distracted teenager searching for a career. 2, D 118), composed in October, 1814, nearly 202 years ago. Margarete, is alone in her room, sitting at her spinning-wheel. Margarete's monologue Meine Ruh' ist hin is a key passage in the play, a passage in which Goethe presented the moment that she was overcome by her passion for Faust, the moment of her doom. Challenged by her outraged brother, Faust and Mephistopheles kill him in a swordfight. The song is in three sections, exactly reflecting the form of Goethe's poem. The accompaniment is played by the piano. She picks a Sternblume [an aster or marguerite(!)] One of the first pieces of Romantic-era program music (a piece of music that tells a story or evokes images), Gretchen am spinnrade (“Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel”) tells the story of a young girl pining over a lost love. The video clip to Franz Schubert's "Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel" mirrors Gretchen's spinning and brooding in her love to Faust. The second section is opened with a repetition of the complaint, but then moves to being a catalogue of the marvellous qualities of her lover. Mephistopheles is outraged at the thought that he has just enriched the Church, noting bitterly that the corruption of the Church is so great that they will accept treasure without needing to know where it has come from, even, as in this case, from the Devil himself. Even though the poem is strophic, Schubert varies the musical settings of each verse with drama. That kid was Franz Schubert, and his song "Gretchen am Spinnrade" (Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel) put German art song — or lieder as it's called … All this is beyond our scope in this post. But, as we know, the young composer never received widespread recognition during his lifetime and almost faded from memory for several decades after his death. The character of Gretchen recites (or sings) the words while she spins fiber into yarn at a spinning wheel. My peace of mind has gone, my heart is heavy, I'll never find peace again, never again. I find, I’ll find it never. Goethe's inspiration for the witches' kitchen scene: Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, St. James and the Magician Hermogenes, 1565. He is deeply depressed, tired of life and on the verge of suicide. Input rules for comments: No HTML, no images. History. Faust and Mephistopheles depart, leaving Margarete asking herself what she, a 'simple, ignorant child', has done to find the love of such a wonderful man. Whereas the three archangels had simply reported on the state of the inanimate world, Mephistopheles reports on the state of the humans – 'the little god of the world' – who misuse their God-given reason and have made no progress at all. Let's unravel some of the subtleties in these lines. I'm sorry, but there is no escape: you are in for Faust, the Executive Summary. Her calm, untroubled, modest, dutiful and pious life is gone. Step by step, rationalisation by rationalisation, she moves down the slope of compliance. He is making no progress in his studies, he is getting old and his personal life is bleak. The following year brought the composition of more than 140 songs. Let's review them again: The outstanding and not merely pleasant performance has to capture all this – a difficult task. The three archangels, Raphael, Gabriel and Michael approach the Lord and give him a glowing report in flowery, poetic language of the state of the world: 'all your great works are as wonderful now as they were on the first day'. At the beginning of the piece, the music begins simply with the turning sixteenth note pattern of the piano in correlation with her spinning wheel. The intensity of her love for Faust has destroyed her ability to live any longer within the confines she had known all her life. Can there be any doubt that the act of darkness will take place soon. It was one of the first songs he wrote at the start of a monumentally productive phase of songwriting (1814-1817) and has been called a 'stroke of genius of the first order'.[1]. Then he's all yours, says the Lord, but you will be embarrassed when you have to accept that a good person is aware of the path of righteousness. If I don’t have him. In my continuing music education, I was recently introduced to Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrade (hear, for example, Renee Flemming’s performance of this work). Faust demands of his 'servant' Mephistopheles that he obtain this woman for him immediately, or their pact is broken. That kid was Franz Schubert, and his song "Gretchen am Spinnrade" (Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel) put German art song — or lieder as it's called — on the map. Can we say that an appreciation of the Faustian context of the text is essential to a satisfactory interpretation of the song? The simple accompaniment of the piano, consisting of right hand playing semiquavers, close-interval notes throughout and left hand playing simple accompaniment, the sounds and rhythm of the spinning wheel can be felt as Gretchen sits at the wheel. Faust is even more impressed when he sees the clean and orderly state of her room, her physical cleanliness being a metaphor for her spiritual cleanliness. I used all those card stock election fliers for the cookies to harden.. In the right hand, you can hear the spinning of the wheel, in the left, the staccato clacking of the bobbin. Margarete, is alone in her room, sitting at her spinning-wheel. In “Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel,” his first setting of Goethe, Schubert not only found his calling, he founded an entire type of composition, the art song. Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Musicology, grade: A- (entspricht 1-), Utrecht University (Roosevelt Academy), course: Musiktheorie, language: English, abstract: Franz Schubert (1797-1828) composed one of his most famous Lieder “Gretchen am Spinnrade” (“Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel”) in 1814 when he was just seventeen years old. Faust finally beds Margarete, although we are not told this explicitly. Many productions use the same actors later in the play t… You can hear it sputter in the piano, finally coming back up to speed as the vocal refrain returns. Other articles where Gretchen am Spinnrade is discussed: Franz Schubert: Early life and career: …a poem by Goethe, “Gretchen am Spinnrade” (“Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel”), from Faust; it was his 30th song and in this masterpiece he created at one stroke the German lied (art song). The first section is a complaint at the emotional turmoil that Margarete is now suffering – her former quiet, pious and orderly life has been shattered. The four meet and walk in Martha's garden. Putting the lovestruck girl at a spinning-wheel is a stroke of Goethe's genius, creating a metaphor for her state of mind: restless, disturbed, seething with longing and sexual passion. The Lord, irritated by Mephistopheles' permanent bad opinion of the human race, presses him on a specific case: 'Do you know Faust, my servant?'. All ripped . It will also have an effect on him: he will see 'a Helen in every woman'. I can only hope that Goethe scholars, particularly that gloomy lot the Faust specialists, will not drag me off to Hell when I now 'do' Faust in a few paragraphs, leaving out everything that is not of direct relevance to Gretchen's monologue. Do not click on links unless you are confident that they are safe. On the principle that a picture is worth a thousand words, this should save us a paragraph or two. Mephistopheles appears to him. In this great 18th century play, Mephistopheles has made a bet with God, that he can corrupt the righteous mortal Faust. “Gretchen at her Spinning Wheel” By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | 2020-09-20T15:11:20-05:00 September 20th, 2020 | Categories: Audio/Video , Literature , Poetry | My solace is gone Gretchen, a.k.a. We cannot understand Margarete's verse monologue and its important role in the play unless we have an idea at least of what the play is about and some knowledge of the events that precede and follow this scene. Readers may remember how lacking in that talent. He did not need to clean up Goethe's text but – the musical genius at work – he enhanced it for his musical purpose, adding, for example, the repetition: 'ich finde, ich finde sie nimmer'. Updated October 08, 2018. As Faust and Mephistopheles flee the dungeon, a voice from Heaven announces her eternal salvation, which will come after the death penalty has been carried out. Taken up by Schumann, Brahms, and others in Germany, and by composers around the world, the art song is … Faust, the studious geek, has never come across this ritual. Margarete becomes pregnant. We Schubert fans have to note yet again – wearily yet again – that this magnificent piece brought assistant school teacher Schubert scarcely any money and only local recognition. When the more complex characters in the play deliver monologues – Faust, Mephistopheles and the Archangels, for example – they do so in a complex style. Is denatured to me . Gretchen's Wheel. 1 Zelter: "Als" Authorship. Comments can be nested to a depth of eight. She is arrested and sentenced to death. From the very opening, we hear the voice of the spinning wheel mimicked in the piano part. On October 19, 1814–206 years ago today — Franz Schubert composed his first masterwork, the song Gretchen am Spinnrade — “Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel… Gretchen at the Spinning-Wheel (Faust I, op. and kiss him, just as I want, melting in his kisses. Mephistopheles is delighted to hear this: he much prefers to play the 'cat and mouse game' with living humans than spend his time just persecuting the souls of the dead. Mephistopheles says that of course he does, but currently Faust is being driven mad by his obsessive search for knowledge. They also have to take account of the three sections of the text we identified above: Goethe applied this structure deliberately; Schubert perceived the structure and put it at the heart of his setting. All her thoughts fall to Faust: his poise, nobility, and fascinating words. Input rules for comments: No HTML, no images. We have jumped over the scenes before Mephistopheles' entrance and the mode and details of his manifestation, they are not relevant to us here. Track 6: Gretchen am Spinnrade (Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel) is one of Schubert’s most famous lieder (songs). The style of language used reflects the character of Margarete: the vocabulary and expressions are simple, uncontrived; the sentences are short. Her love is a constant toing and froing between pure passion and panic desperation, between slowing down and accelerating - the … Franz Schubert, the seventeen year-old assistant teacher, saw the potential of Gretchen's monologue clearly, caught the rhythm of the spinning wheel just as Goethe had done: the thrust of the pedal, the oscillation of the wheel, the pulling out of the thread. Well-formed URLs will be rendered as links automatically. “Gretchen at her Spinning Wheel” By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | 2020-09-20T15:11:20-05:00 September 20th, 2020 | Categories: Audio/Video , Literature , Poetry | My solace is gone Songs Gretchen am Spinnrade (1814) D118 This song was recorded on the album 'Schubert Year by Year' on Stone Records, in preparation for Oxford Lieder's 2014 The Schubert Project, the first ever complete performance of Schubert's songs in a single festival.It features one … Surround a long quotation with curly braces: {blockquote}. My poor head is crazed, my poor mind shattered. Without doubt. The Lord tells him that as long as Faust is on earth, Mephistopheles is free to tempt him. 2, D. 118 (1814). She and Parsons do not hang around and his playing is precise and clear. She is young, inexperienced and has fallen madly in love. and the magic flow of his speech, the press of his hand and, oh, his kiss! We should note Goethe's skill in handling short, rhymed lines – always a severe test of poetic talent. Her initial fascination with Faust is the first sign of her corruptibility. Returning, Margarete disrobes, opens the cupboard to hang up her clothes and finds the box of jewellery. from the garden and tortures it in the traditional way lovers do by ripping its petals off, one by one: 'he loves me, he loves me not', ending on 'he loves me'. Gretchen am Spinnrade was set to the text of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a dramatist and poet. Faust Track 6: Gretchen am Spinnrade (Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel) is one of Schubert’s most famous lieder (songs). Contents copyright © Figures-Of-Speech     Subscribe to RSS feedCite. My poor head. the only time in the whole song, the spinning wheel stops, as Gretchen is overcome by emotion, and two very dissonant chords are heard (1:41). The accompaniment continues alone to allow the singer to recover. See details. Her love is a constant toing and froing between pure … She's had enough: faced with this shifty pair and in an agony of guilt she chooses to stay in prison and face her mortal end. Performed live by Georgi Slavchev, piano. If there is one thing we have learned in our consideration of some of his other pieces –Zögernd leise,Winterreise,Die schöne Müllerin– it is that Schubert was a skilled, extremely sensitive and perceptive reader of a poem. Schubert himself seems to have been aware of what he had achieved in Gretchen am Spinnrade. Faust is lured into a pact with the devil, … Margarete, although her modesty repelled Faust's indecorous advances in the street, was impressed by his noble appearance and manners. 2) and Erlkönig (Op. The traditional names 'Satan' or 'the Devil', although they are implicit, are rarely used in Faust. I don't think of Margarete as a mezzosoprano, but Ludwig's performance is good enough to make me forget that problem. Margarete is seduced by the jewellery and the two ponder how she could keep the treasure. It’s like a grave. With the text for Gretchen am Spinnrade he needed to do nothing. The text of this scene was notably put to music by Franz Schubert in the lied Gretchen am Spinnrade, Op. Analysis. He is utterly smitten by her, accosts her in the street and offers to walk her home on his arm. She sings about her heavy heart, how peace has fled from her never to be found, and how upset she is. Do not click on links unless you are confident that they are safe. Within this one piece, there are officially two characters which play into the music directly: The spinning wheel and Gretchen. You have been warned! Well-formed URLs will be rendered as links automatically. Franz Xaver Simm, (1853-1918): Faust meets Margarete in the street. On 'his kiss' we expect an orgasmic climax without the sound of shattering glass. The play begins with a prologue set in Heaven. All twisted. The director approaches the theatre from a financial perspective, and is looking to make an income by pleasing the crowd; the actor seeks his own glory through fame as an actor; and the poet aspires to create a work of art with meaningful content. He was usually able to make something out of mediocrity, but give him a quality text and he would soar. With Stephanie Cumming, Nico Ehrenteit, Janna Rottmann, Marta Kaczorowska. At the beginning of the piece, the music begins simply with the turning sixteenth note pattern of the piano in correlation with her spinning wheel. Even when his friends sent a collection of his songs to Goethe himself in April 1816 there came no answer from the great man. In this particular scene, a scene from Goethe's drama Faust, Gretchen is at her spinning-wheel troubled by her feelings for Faust, a man she just met and barely knows. The first thing you’ll notice about Gretchen am Spinnrade is how accurately Schubert manages to mimic the sound of the spinning wheel. It is a piece from the master himself, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), taken from his world-famous play Faust. Like Comment Share. Gretchen is at her spinning wheel, thinking of Faust. The potion turns out to be poisonous and puts her mother to sleep in the veterinary sense. Were he to kiss her now, she says, she’d swoon and die. The video clip to Franz Schubert's "Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel" mirrors Gretchen's spinning and brooding in her love to Faust. Gretchen at Her Spinning Wheel by Natalie Weaver. In Gretchen, we hear…. By Natalie Kertes Weaver on April 1, 2015 • ( 3 ) In my continuing music education, I was recently introduced to Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrade (hear, for example, Renee Flemming’s performance of this work). In Gretchen am Spinnrade (Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel) a sextuplet figure (six notes played over four beats), winding round and round, illustrates the spinning wheel. In this Schubert original, Liszt has combined the voice and piano in a piece only for solo piano. The turmoil seems to be worth it. She goes insane and when the baby is delivered she drowns the newborn child. Another set of songs Schubert sent to Goethe in June 1825 went unanswered. In the next scene we meet the man himself, Dr Heinrich Faust, polymath scholar. If you click “Agree and Continue” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. Another mark of Goethe's genius is the division of the monologue into three sections, each introduced by, The third section does not describe some vague mental yearning: this is full-blown physical desire. My heart so heavy. In the present case, that musical intelligence caused him to alight on the monologue Meine Ruh' ist hin, 'My peace of mind has gone', spoken by a young woman, Margarete ('Gretchen'), whilst she is working at her spinning-wheel. Emerging into the street, the first woman Faust sees is Margarete, returning from confession. Nashville, Tennessee. Another mark of Goethe's genius is the division of the monologue into three sections, each introduced by Meine Ruh' ist hin. Gretchen presents Faust with the famous question "What is your way about religion, pray?" The song is a setting of Goethe’s poem “ Gretchens Stube ,” in which Gretchen, a poor but upright maiden, sits alone in her room at the wheel, thinking longingly of Faust. She, too, thought that it could not have been come by honestly and so they handed it over to the local priest for the use of the Church. Franz Xaver Simm, (1853-1918): Margarete, Faust and Mephistopheles in the dungeon. Oh, if only I could seize and hold him. It was usual to group shorter pieces together under a single opus number. For a good performance however, the singer and the pianist have to capture the obsessive, physical passion of Margarete. The accompaniment mimics the whirr of the spinning wheel with constant sixteenth notes played in the right hand while the left hand portrays the treadle pedal. Only after Schubert's death – how often Schubert fans have to write that phrase! – did Goethe hear the Erlkönig performed for him and accepted that the words and the music created a 'visible picture'. The song is a setting of Goethe’s poem “Gretchens … Within another seven years Franz would be in his grave. 60 No Bake cookies Special Dark Cocoa powder and pecans. Mephistopheles takes the besotted Faust to Margarete's room while she is out. Comments can be nested to a depth of eight. ... Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel. From this moment the action of the play turns and spirals downwards through one evil after another until it ends in tragedy. Mephistopheles conjures up a box of jewellery, which they leave in the cupboard in her room. The similarities and differences between the play Faust and the Book of Job are fascinating but too extensive to be dealt with here.

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