The second song in the
song cycle "
Winterreise" by
Franz Schubert. What follows is part of a paper that I am writing for my music history class. I will be updating this information.
Here he speaks of his beloved's unfaithfulness, and that she is going to be a "rich bride" Perhaps she is going to marry someone else? Someone with their feet on the ground and their head not full of "
dreams"? I think that the
Wanderer is being
melodramatic here and running wild with paranoid dreams of his beloved's faithfulness. Let's go back to "
Her mother talked of Marriage" If she did, and we assume that the mother talked of marriage with the wanderer and it wasn't some absurd comedy of errors, we become skeptical of the Wanderer's understanding of the world around him. He speaks of himself in the third person. "He should have noticed it sooner. “He'd never then have though to find a faithful woman there." This smacks of the Wanderer justifying his leaving by giving himself a reason to travel on.
We hear the wind spinning of the weathervane in many directions before settling down. As his heart feels pulled in all directions before settling on being broken, the wind resembles that as well, but notice the fermatas and when he has control over the uncontrollable wind. I believe this is again the Wanderer's manufacturing of his own pain. Commanding the elements to obey his broken heart and create the environment he needs to be heartbroken in.
"Inside, the wind is playing with hearts, as on the roof, but not so loud." Here the fermata is at the pinnacle of the analogy, and Schubert intends to really mark that in the listener's ears. It's amazing how Schubert can bring this to a high point of emotional drama that could be almost laughable if pushed any farther. He comes just short though. He makes the pain real, but on closer inspection the doubt remains.
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Gute Nacht
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Gefrorne Tränen