and exercises in willed hope on display here. Notice too that the sequence in the vocal line in measures 19–22 states a descending perfect fourth three times, thus multiply correcting the lamenting diminished fourth contour from earlier. And the wedge marks at the start of each measure in measures 6–17 and thereafter, with certain exceptions, can have a temporal dimension, indicating an ever-so-slight lengthening of the pitches and harmonies to which they are adjoined. By this means and many others at the start, Schubert brings longing, with an undercurrent of loss already manifest, to musical life.
The “Etwas langsamer” section (example 1.7) at the close is this song’s culminating glory: no wonder it so captivated Brahms. Schubert changes the key signature to B major: all other instances of parallel major earlier in this work have been inscribed in a thicket of accidentals, but now his Suleika insists that parallel major mode shall be the tonal climate. The “heartbeat”-tolling dominant pitches, which multiply in their doubling in measures 133–40, are expectation made incarnate, with a palpable admixture of obsession and awareness of passing time and the ticking clock; by the end, they sound at virtually every level. But B minor insists on reasserting itself at measure 118 and measure 130, two slight but telling specimens of her recognition that “he” is not there and that only his physical presence is the breath of life, not the inadequate breeze amanuensis. Schubert repeats the words of the final stanza three times; this is arialike repetition, and here it functions almost like an incantation or charm, meant to bring Suleika’s beloved to her by the magic powers of this music. Schubert also fashions the figures in both voice and piano to yearn upward to the emphasized second beat, this after all those downbeat emphases throughout the “etwas lebhaft” first section; much of the character of this last section derives from these ascending inflections.
When Suleika repeats the entire opening passage of the section, there is a significant change in the piano, with the right hand shifting upward by an octave, now exactly doubling Suleika’s part; both this detail and the pianissimo dynamics indicate, in classic Schubertian fashion, withdrawal into an inner world. The closing arpeggiated chord in the postlude has the third chord degree on top and the hollow open fifth from the start of the vocal part sounding at the bottom: she is still waiting. What is remarkable about this music, as so many of Schubert’s subtlest songs, is its portrayal of ambivalence, of mixed emotions and unresolved feelings. It is this, in sum, that distinguishes “Suleika I” from “Suleika II,” for all the undeniable fact that the second song is not merely an empty vehicle for high notes and digital dexterity, as Graham Johnson has correctly observed.
“How many different ways can I incorporate subtle, swaying motion—gracefully, charmingly seductive—into these words?” Schubert must have asked himself when he created the introduction to “Suleika II.” Just tallying the layers at the beginning, we find once more the combination of an ostinato on the dominant pitch (this fuels the mood of erotic anticipation) and twofold swaying motion: the rocking back-and-forth octaves in the right hand, like the tintinnabulation of little bells, and the left hand that breaks up individual harmonies into lighter components and sends them swinging and swaying as well. Even the written-out turning figure in measure 4, with the downbeat dissonance of E against F, is a small, spicy, seductive touch (example 1.8).
Example 1.7. Franz Schubert, “Suleika I,” D717, measures 109–43.
When the voice enters, it is with a vocal line filled with intervallic gestures that also sway back and forth, the curvature luscious to a degree. The “come hither” quality to the upward tilt of “Schwingen” that links this phrase to the one following, beginning with the words “West, wie sehr,” is another wonderful detail. Furthermore, there is a palpable Janissary effect to the “thump” of the low bass notes on the downbeats, vaguely reminiscent of mehter music, or mehterhane bands whose shrill winds and large percussion batteries were aped in alla turca works by Mozart, Beethoven, and many more. (It is a curious tidbit from history that the mehter ensemble was banned in 1826 and replaced, by Sultan Mahmud in 1828, with a European-style band trained by Donizetti.) In the Victoria and Albert instrument collection, there is a piano from circa 1825 by Georg Haschka with five pedals: a sustaining pedal, one with a bassoon stop, an una corda pedal, a percussion pedal, and one for cymbal and bell effects in the lower octaves, all of it perfect for Orientalizing music. We notice that the right hand is silent on the downbeat to permit the percussion pedal to resound; when Suleika bids the zephyr hurry to speak to her beloved in the “Etwas geschwinder” final section (example 1.5b), the plunge down to the percussion pedal pitches happens on every beat in three-four meter. Patting your stomach while rubbing your head seems positively easy by comparison. And with the second section in measures 40–76 (example 1.9), Schubert combines a lighter version of the Janissary thump with accented offbeat ostinato tones in a rhythmic pattern to which Hugo Wolf would later be partial, here to tell of newly awakened “stilles Sehnen” (example 1.9). In the ongoing war between hope and longing, passion and anxiety that is this song, Schubert has the piano corridor in measures 36–39 seem as if about to deliver us to G minor, the B-flat major tonic key’s melancholy kin, but he deflects the song to the pastoral zephyr’s F major at the last minute. (This is a temporary deferral.) The mere mention of “Sehnen,” longing, darkens Nature and the music alike and does so by stages.
Example 1.8. Franz Schubert, “Suleika II,” D720, measures 1–16.
At the end of the first section, Suleika repeats the words “Ach, für Leid müsst’ ich vergehen, / hofft’ ich nicht zu sehn ihn wieder,” three times (measures 92–120). On the first statement, it is the final word “wieder” that trips the end of the returned music from the beginning (measures 84–99) and a move to G major—the reiterated E-flat neighbor note to D helps convey the mixture of hope and suffering in this passage. At the end of this stanza, in the piano interlude in measures 120–27, we seem to be returning to B-flat major, but then Schubert’s Suleika stops short of resolution for one of this composer’s trademark measures of silence: a held breath, a pause in which resolutions are made, in which suffering turns into new hope. This moment always makes me think of “Dove sono” and the countess’s sudden resolve “di cangiar l’ingrato cor” at the end of an aria that begins with passive pain. What follows the arresting pause in “Suleika II” is the irresistibly light and lively galop, with the characteristic hoofbeat rhythms made almost weightless. A quite difficult piano part must sound effortless. For the dance-mad Viennese, this would have been as catnip to a cat, and its charm is only heightened by the tiny touches of B-flat minor (measures 139–42), D flat major (measures 153–55), and G minor (measures 160–63) along the way, as this Suleika too repeats Marianne’s words over and over, not to bring out the different emotional layers but to revel in the dance of love (example 1.10).
In the end, Milder received from Schubert music for those who could easily appreciate such vivacity, as do we, but Schubert refuses to end with all-out display. The dreamy musing “mit halber Stimme” (“with half voice”) as the scherzo dies away restores a measure of interiority to a Suleika II who is elsewhere less profound than the singer we meet in “Suleika I.” How lovely that her final vocal phrase begins as a fanfare, loud and triumphant, and yet hints at the end, by the descent to quietude, at her capacity to mull over the totality of love in more inward fashion.
Whenever I hear the two Suleika songs, I recall Marianne von Willemer’s poem “Was ist Gesang?” written, we are told, for a singer.
Example 1.9. Franz Schubert, “Suleika II,”