Branching Out / Vol. 3

What to listen to next, based on our experiences with the melancholy music of Jean Sibelius and Franz Schubert.

Paul Cézanne (French, 1839–1906). Chestnut Trees at Jas de Bouffan, ca. 1885–1886. Oil on canvas. Minneapolis Institute of Art

Welcome to the third edition of Branching Out — a new series where I use works recently featured in Shades of Blue as your launching point for discovering even more melancholy classical music that cultivates calm, connection, and healing. If you missed last month's installment, head over here to get to know music by Baldassare Galuppi, Ludwig van Beethoven, Francis Poulenc, and Kurt Weill.

To grow our tree of classical music knowledge this month, we'll explore music based on our recent deep dives into a haunting portrait of loneliness from Jean Sibelius and Franz Schubert's intimate ode to friendship. 

So let's dig in and branch out …

If you loved the gentle, forlorn sound of the English horn, the instrument Jean Sibelius used to give voice to the mythic Swan of Tuonela, be sure to check out …

Aaron Copland / Quiet City

The music of Aaron Copland often calls to mind grand panoramas of rural America — from flowing fields of wheat in Appalachian Spring to Rodeo's raucous depiction of the Wild West. But in Quiet City, the composer turns his ear to urban life, offering a hushed vignette of New York City at night. 

Copland originally composed Quiet City as incidental music to an Irwin Shaw play of the same name, but decided to rework the music for string orchestra, trumpet, and English horn when the Broadway production closed after two performances. At the center of Shaw's realist play is a man wrestling with his conscience: In the pursuit of status and material wealth, he's rejected his religious background and left behind childhood dreams of becoming a musician. 

Alone in Central Park one night, he hears the sound of a solitary trumpet, the instrument his brother played growing up. The man asks strangers passing by if they hear the sweet melody wafting through the air, but no one does. The trumpet haunts him alone, a symbol of the personal and artistic convictions he's abandoned. In Copland's music, the English horn and trumpet call to each other across Central Park's shadowy woods and manicured meadows — two lonely voices crying out in a city of millions.

And if you're wondering, Michael — did Sibelius write any other music depicting his beloved swans? then take a listen to …

Jean Sibelius / Symphony No. 5

Two decades after penning his portrait of the Swan of Tuonela — the lone figure who guards the River of Death separating the land of the living from the underworld of Finnish mythology — another swan inspired one of the most breathtaking moments in the composer's Fifth Symphony. 

Actually, it was a bevy of swans — 16 to be exact. While walking through the woods around his home in the Finnish countryside in April 1915, Sibelius encountered a grand sight he would never forget. He wrote in his diary:

"Today at ten to eleven I saw sixteen swans. One of my greatest experiences! Lord God, what beauty! They circled over me for a long time. Disappeared into the solar haze like a gleaming silver ribbon."

The composer quickly commemorated the scene in the final movement of his Fifth Symphony, which the Finnish government had commissioned to celebrate Sibelius's 50th birthday. A swarm of activity sets the scene at the beginning of the movement, with the orchestra's string sections moving breathlessly about as fragments of melody swirl through woodwinds and brass. But barely a minute into the action, a moment of breathless magic overtakes the music. 

The scurrying strings dissolve as a quartet of French horns launch a chorus of sublime, triumphant harmony — which Sibelius called his "swan hymn" — that grows even grander when taken up by the full brass section. I dare you to listen and not get choked up, feeling the weightlessness of the swans' majestic flight through the cerulean sky and into the hazy horizon.

If you were moved by the tender song without words at the center of Schubert's Piano Trio No. 1 and want to dip your toe into the romantic composer's pool of 600-plus songs, here are two to begin your listening journey ...

Franz Schubert / "Gretchen am Spinnrade" (Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel)

Before the 19th century, songwriting in Germany and Austria was mainly confined to the tradition of the folk song (Volkslied), settings of strophic poetry presented in a simple, unadorned musical style. But over the course of 14 years, from 1814 to 1828, Schubert transformed that tradition into what we now know as the art song (Kunstlied) — a marriage of music and poetry that became just as important a genre in Western classical music as the symphony, sonata, and string quartet.

Among Schubert's most enduring examples of the art song is one he composed at just 17 years old. In "Gretchen am Spinnrade," we encounter a scene from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust in which Gretchen, alone in her chamber, expresses her feelings for Faust in a monologue that's equal parts anxious and ecstatic.

Part of the song's magic is Schubert's astonishing use of the piano, with its left hand conjuring the repetitive motion of the machine's bobbin as a serpentine figuration in the right hand follows each rotation of the spinning wheel. But these obsessive motions in the piano aren't presented as mere atmosphere — they mirror the web of conflicted emotions spinning through Gretchen's mind. Passion and fear consume her thoughts as she works at her wheel:

My peace is gone,
my heart is heavy;
I shall never
ever find peace again.

When he's not with me,
life is like the grave;
the whole world
is turned to gall.

Gretchen's words become more fervent as she envisions her lover's smile, the magnetic pull of his eyes, the feeling of his hand caressing hers. Overcome with breathless emotion at the thought of his kiss, she pauses her work — a moment of rapt silence. Hesitantly at first, the wheel begins to spin once again. Desire continues to wrestle with fear in Gretchen's mind, as she returns to the haunting opening strain of her song: My peace is gone, my heart is heavy …

Follow along with the German text and English translation.

Franz Schubert / "Frühlingstraum" (Dream of Spring)

From one of Schubert's earliest songs, we now journey to one of the last he wrote before his death in 1828. The second of his sublime song cycles — a collection of songs centered around a single story — Winterreise (Winter Journey) presents a harrowing odyssey of the soul. Over the course of 24 songs based on the poetry of Wilhelm Müller, we follow the snow-crunching steps of a broken-hearted man after he's been banished from his lover's family home. Memories of her beauty and their love flood his mind as he makes his way through a dark, icy terrain. Dogs ferociously bark at him and crows circle his head as obsessive visions of death and isolation take over his thoughts.

About halfway through the cycle, "Frühlingstraum" gives the listener what we perceive at first to be a light-hearted departure from the overwhelming sorrow. Here our narrator awakes from a dream — one where he saw flowers blossoming in May, heard gentle birdsong at the crack of dawn, and felt warm embraces from his sweet maiden. But as sleep wears off and reality sets in, the song's jovial major-key tune gives way to a new melody of doubt and longing.

Those flowers? Just ice forming on the windowpanes of houses he passes in the dead of night. That gentle embrace? Merely a mirage borne from heartache. The music grows more despondent as major turns to minor. Overwhelmed with sadness, our narrator sings:

But there, on the window panes, 
who had painted the leaves? 
Are you laughing at the dreamer 
who saw flowers in winter?

I close my eyes again,
my heart still beats so warmly.
Leaves on my window, when will you turn green? 
When shall I hold my love in my arms?

As distant bells of mourning reverberate in the piano, echoing the pain of unrequited love, Schubert leaves us with a ghostly shiver that erupts from the depths of the piano.

Follow along with the German text and English translation.

What was your experience listening to these works? I want to know! Your comments and likes fuel me, so be sure to drop a note below. 👇