Schöne Fremde: Be Aware of the Emotions

Tenor Luciano Marazzo at a recital

This interview with tenor Luciano Marazzo follows last week’s analysis of the Lied “Schöne Fremde” which included his recording of the song. He speaks about his preparation of the text and what challenges of language and pronunciation he had to master.

Mr. Marazzo was born in Buenos Aires. He lives in Moscow, Idaho, and holds a Masters degree in Vocal Performance from the University of Arizona. As founder and CEO of the Online Music Guild he has been reaching out to classical musicians around the globe who want to study their art on a reliable internet platform.

Q: As an Argentina-born singer, what other languages besides Spanish and English do you speak?

Luciano Marazzo: In Argentina I spoke only Spanish and Italian. I did learn English but I did not get to speak it fluently until I moved to the US. For my vocal studies, I ended up learning French, German, and Russian, basically for the sake of pronunciation.

Q: Why did you choose “Schöne Fremde” for the recital?

Luciano Marazzo: “Schöne Fremde” is a lied written by Robert Schumann. The poem is by Eichendorff, and I had a set of three selections from Liederkreis Opus 39 by Schumann. The recital was in Tucson, Arizona, and it granted me a Masters in Voice from the University of Arizona.

Q: How did you prepare the text? Did you read a translation?

Luciano Marazzo: My professor Grayson Hirst emphasized in his coaching mostly diction, so I got to work on it a lot. I also went to the German department and bought coffee for some of the adjunct professors.

Q: Italian coffee, I guess?

Luciano Marazzo: Well, some of them asked for Americanos. I can’t force them to teach me good German and drink Italian coffee.

Q: What were the challenges in diction? Were there words or phrases that were particularly difficult?

Luciano Marazzo: I would say that the three big challenges were the following.

First, as a younger singer, I was still trying to understand the challenge of anticipating the attack of the consonants and making them crisp to get the vowels to float on the beat. This was not very hard but it does require artistry. That’s why German is such a beautiful language when sung correctly.

Second, memorizing was not hard but having the awareness for the emphasis of the emotions was crucial, which means making it look and sound as a natural delivery of the German poem. The challenge was to get the act together as if I were really speaking out the words.

Third, one of the challenges about the notes above G (Sol) is “aggiustamento”. The word “trunken” is on a g# and it required modifying the vowel “u” to and open “a”. This makes the high notes higher but it requires some style not to over-do the emphasis so it does not sound like “tranken”.

Here again is Luciano Marazzo’s recording:

More information about Luciano Marazzo: www.onlinemusicguild.com and www.lucianomarazzo.com

Schöne Fremde – a Woman, the World, or Schumann’s Song itself?

The song “Schöne Fremde” you hear in this recording was composed by Robert Schumann. The text of the song is a poem which the German writer Joseph von Eichendorff wrote as part of his novel “Dichter und ihre Gesellen” (Poets and their fellows). In 1840, seven years after the book was published, Schumann began to compose a cycle of 12 songs, the “Liederkreis, Opus 39.” One of them is “Schöne Fremde.”

The singer in this recording is Luciano Marazzo. The Argentinian-born tenor found his home in Moscow, Idaho, where he runs the Online Music Guild (www.onlinemusicguild.com), an online service that provides music coaching for classical musicians around the globe.

The poem’s language is straight-forward, its title is not. In the novel, a wanderer has just arrived in Rome, a city he has never seen before. He sits alone in the park of his host’s palace when a young beautiful woman appears. The wanderer takes a guitar and sings “Schöne Fremde.”

Schöne Fremde can mean a beautiful (schön) female (as the -e ending of adjective and noun is telling us) stranger (Fremde) or the beautiful foreign world (here certainly Rome) because Fremde means both, a stranger and the world outside of what we know. The adjective fremd means strange and foreign in the same time.

The poem has three stanzas. The first describes the scene, the place and the time. In the second stanza, actually in the middle of the poem, we meet the narrator who believes to hear a message from this fantastic Roman night (phantastische Nacht), and in the third stanza, the narrator expresses what the stars are – or better: might be – telling him.

I

Es rauschen die Wipfel und schauern,
Als machten zu dieser Stund
Um die halbversunkenen Mauern
Die alten Götter die Rund.

This is one sentence, stating the activity of the tree tops (die Wipfel), rauschen and schauern, two popular verbs in romantic poetry, and comparing it with a walk old Gods take around the ruins in the night. Rauschen means to rustle or to whoosh, a sound we hear mostly when nature is in action and forebodes fateful events. Schauern is used in an old-fashioned way. Today we say erschauern or erschaudern, together with an object (e.g. uns, mich, die Kinder). The tree tops make us shiver.

Notice the word order. The flexibility of the German language allows us to put the verb schauern after the subject (die Wipfel). Normally, we say, “Es rauschen und schauern die Wipfel” or “Die Wipfel rauschen und schauern.”

The next three lines present a comparison to the tree tops’s activities: As if (als + subjunctive of machen = machten) the old Gods (die alten Götter) walk around (die Runde machen) the walls (die Mauern) which time has thrown in disrepair (halbversunken = half sunken), meaning the ruins of Rome at this hour (zu dieser Stunde).

II.

Hier hinter den Myrtenbäumen
In heimlich dämmernder Pracht,
Was sprichst du wirr wie in Träumen
Zu mir, phantastische Nacht?

It starts out as a statement, but in mid-sentence it turns into a simple question: Was sprichst du zu mir, phantastische Nacht? After the location – hier (here), behind the myrtle trees (Myrtenbäume, a plant, found in the Mediterranian area, in this poem a symbol for Italy) – and the condition – in splendor (Pracht) that is secret (heimlich) and dawning (dämmernd) – we expect a verb. Instead, we face a question word: was. Now the narrator appears on the scene and addresses the night: What are you telling me, fantastic night, wirr (confused, mazy) wie in Träumen (like in dreams)?

III.

Es funkeln auf mich alle Sterne
Mit glühendem Liebesblick,
Es redet trunken die Ferne
Wie von künftigem, großem Glück.

Now the narrator is present in the schöne Fremde. The stars (Sterne) twinkle (funkeln) at him (auf mich) with a burning (glühend) gaze of love (der Liebesblick); and die Ferne (the distance, afar) talks (reden) enthralled (trunken) – but about what? Now, the poem’s message is becoming as ambivalent as its title. It does not say that the stars talk about, but talk as of (wie von) a future grand happiness (künftigem, großem Glück). At the end, the poem – and therefore the song – itself becomes the schöne Fremde.

Sei’n wir wieder gut – Part 2: the Language, the Linguistics

Last week we looked at backgound, style, and vocabulary of “Sei’n wir wieder gut,” an aria of the opera Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss. Now we examine what the character, der Komponist, is telling us, his language and the linguistics of the aria’s text. The recording in this YouTube video is by the Swedish soprano Anne Sofie von Otter.

Sei’n wir wieder gut!

The aria begins with an imperative; the Komponist addresses himself and his impresario, so, he has to conjugate the verb sein accordingly (for first person plural wir).

“Lets be good again!”

The verb sein is irregular. In imperative: (du) sei, (Sie) seien Sie, (ihr) seid, (wir) seien wir

Ich sehe jetzt alles mit anderen Augen!

It continues with a statement of change and reconciliation, a phrase German-speaking people would say also today when they change their view on things.

“Now, I see everything with different eyes.”

Die Tiefen des Daseins sind unermesslich!
Mein lieber Freund,
Es gibt manches auf der Welt,
Das lässt sich nicht sagen,

In a straightforward language, the Komponist ends the statement with a conclusive thought.

“The depths of existence are immeasurable!

My dear friend,

There are some things in the world

That cannot be said. Or: That cannot be expressed.”

The combination reflexive + lassen + infinitive expresses a form of the passive voice when something can be done or is possible to be done. Das lässt sich nicht sagen = literally it lets itself not be said.

Die Dichter unterlegen ja recht gute Worte, recht gute –
Jedoch, jedoch, jedoch, jedoch, jedoch! –
Mut ist in mir, Mut, Freund!

The Komponist explains why some things cannot be expressed with words, which are after all the working material of poets. At first he praises the poets. They unterlegen (to add text to music or to highlight) pretty good words (recht gute Worte) but he modifies the praise with the particle ja, preparing the listener for an opposing or restrictive statement which opens with jedoch (however) – five times!

“Courage is in me, courage, friend!”

Die Welt ist lieblich
Und nicht fürchterlich dem Mutigen.

This sentence begins and ends with a noun, and in between the Komponist describes how the world relates to the courageous person. To the courageous person, the world is lovely and not terrible.

The phrase fürchterlich dem Mutigen appears as dative. Der Mutige is the indirect object and therefore must be expressed as dative while the adjective belongs to the predicate of the sentence. (Die Welt ist lieblich und nicht fürchterlich.)

Und was ist denn Musik?

Now, the Komponist begins to muse about music and to praise music, here adding the intensifier denn, making this a rhetorical question.

Musik ist eine heilige Kunst zu versammeln
Alle Arten von Mut wie Cherubim
Um einen strahlenden Thron, das ist Musik.

The librettist von Hofmannsthal, chose a word order similar to English:
“Music is a sacred art to gather
all kinds of courage, like cherubim
Around a shining throne; that is music.”

As in English, cherubim is plural for cherub, a biblical angel who guards paradise.

Und darum ist sie die heilige unter den Künsten.

“And therefore, it is the sacred one among the arts.”

The pronoun sie stands for die Musik. Please note that the Komponist does not say that music is the most sacred art. He says, there is only one art that is sacred: music.

Sei’n wir wieder gut – Part 1: Background, Style, Vocabulary

Berlin-Neukölln

“Sei’n wir wieder gut” is an aria of the opera Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss. In it the otherwise nameless character der Komponist, performed by a mezzo-sopran, praises music as “the sacred one among the arts,” die heilige unter den Künsten.

He has endured some humiliation after he arrived at the palace of Vienna’s richest man. He was to present his opera seria “Ariadne auf Naxos,” when he learned that the commeddia dell’arte troupe of the coquettish performer Zerbinetta had been hired to perform a burlesque right after his show, for him an insult to his noble work. Things got worse. Because his dinner with his guests was running late, the host ordered that farce and tragedy had to be performed at the same time – how that is now up to the artists. At first, der Komponist had refused, but then Zerbinetta persuaded him in the most flirtatious way to play along – successfully.

All tension falls away from his heart, when he proclaims to his impresario (der Musiklehrer) in an imperative, “Sei’n wir wieder gut.” (See last week’s blog entry “Imperative: How to Give an Order in German.”)

The text speaks the language of forgiveness and relief when he sees alles mit anderen Augen, of surrender and the bottomless naivité of a pure artist. Librettist von Hofmannsthal does not bother to instill complicated grammar into the text since the vocabulary of passion is sufficient to describe the inner turbulence of the character.

This week, in part one we look at the vocabulary. Next week, in part 2 we will learn what der Komponist actually says (and the soprano sings); we will examine the linguistics of “Sei’n wir wieder gut.”

Vocabulary

die Tiefen (plural) = die Tiefe, noun created from the adjective tief (deep)

die Tiefe = depth

das Dasein = existence as a philosophical term; da (there, here) + sein (to be)

unermesslich = immeasurable, fathomless; messen = to measure

manches = some things, derived from the pronoun and the article word manch = some, e.g. manchmal = sometimes

unterlegen = here: to add text to music; legen = to lay, under = unter

recht gut = pretty good; recht stems from richtig (correct).

lieblich = lovely

fürchterlich = horrible, dreadful; die Furcht = fear

der Mutige = noun indicating a person and derived from the adjective mutig; a person who is courageous. In German we can derive a noun describing a person from any adjective: der Ungeduldige (the impatient one, male), die Schnelle (the fast one, feminine), du Guter (the good one, male)

versammeln = to gather (people); sammeln = to gather, collect things

Next week: Sei’n wir wieder gut – Part 2: the Text, the Linguistics