Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2xdlg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-24T15:40:42.879Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Softened, Smudged, Erased

Punctuation and Continuity in Clara Schumann’s Lieder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2021

Joe Davies
Affiliation:
Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford
Get access

Summary

One of the most striking aspects of Clara Schumann’s songs is the way they flow. They tend to move in four-bar phrases, but each four-bar phrase is connected seamlessly with the one that follows it. One way that she creates this feeling of seamless continuity is by weakening or avoiding cadences at the ends of musical sections and the poetic stanzas associated with them, fusing together adjacent sections and stanzas by softening, smudging or even erasing the musical and poetic punctuation marks at the end of them. This chapter considers how and why she does this. Through a close analysis of two representative songs – ‘Warum willst du and’re fragen’, Op. 12 No. 11, and ‘Ich hab’ in deinem Auge’, Op. 13 No. 5 – it highlights the strategies that she uses to join together sections and stanzas, as well as the various ways that those strategies relate to the poetry. In so doing, the chapter not only reveals a crucial hallmark of Clara Schumann’s song aesthetic, but also ponders a question that has been largely neglected in recent studies of romantic form: how do musical and poetic closure relate to one another?

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×