The Habits of Distraction by Wood Michael

Author:Wood, Michael
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782845539
Publisher: International Specialized Book Services
Published: 2018-05-24T16:00:00+00:00

IV

We can be distracted examiners of classical music too, but we have to choose to be, to cultivate the paradox of a willed relaxation of attention. I want to think of Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs in this context, and to concentrate – or fail to concentrate – on the last of them and its magnificent, Beckettian attempt not to end. The songs were composed in 1948, and premiered in London in 1950. Kirsten Flagstad was the soloist; the Philharmonia Orchestra was conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler. Strauss died in the intervening year.

The first three of the Last Songs are settings of poems by Herman Hesse, called respectively ‘Spring’, ‘September’ and ‘Going to Sleep’. The fourth song is called ‘At Sunset’, literally ‘In the Red of the Evening’ (Im Abendrot), and is based on a poem by Joseph von Eichendorff. The text is spoken/sung by someone who says ‘we’, recounting a life’s journey – ‘Through sorrow and joy/we have walked hand in hand’ – and reminding a partner that it will soon be time to sleep. ‘How weary we are of wandering’, the voice says’. ‘Is this perhaps death?’

Wie sind wir wandermüde –

Ist dies etwa der Tod?

Weary of wandering is a good translation, but the German, literally ‘wander-weary’ or ‘travel-tired’, offers a larger array of suggestions. We may be tired by traveling as well as of traveling, we could be tired of the very idea of travel, or travel could have its own quite specific form of fatigue. Wandern is obviously cognate with wandering, but also means journeying, going places, or just hiking, and auswandern means to go into exile.

The slight word etwa may be the most interesting and freighted term in the poem. It does mean ‘perhaps’, and that is the usual translation in this context. But it also means ‘approximately’, ‘in some respects’ or ‘are you really suggesting something like this?’ Eichendorff’s line is sometimes translated as ‘Can this be death?’ And etwa may be just an expletive (Merriam-Webster: ‘a syllable, word, or phrase inserted to fill a vacancy . . . without adding to the sense’). We see at once how poignant the usage becomes in the poem and the song. When you know you are about to die, why are you saying perhaps, or even offering the most extremely diluted form of the notion? I’m not sure I would ask this question of the poem alone – Strauss’s setting has done a great deal for it, and in any case it was through the setting that I arrived at the poem.

The Last Songs were associated for a long time with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, who made many recordings of them in the 1960s. In 1982, Jessye Norman created a now classic version – the orchestra was that of the Gewandhaus, Leipzig, and the conductor was Kurt Masur. I’m thinking mainly of this performance, but, as you will see, I have Schwartzkopf in mind too. It is significant for my purposes that the Norman version of ‘Im Abendrot’ is the

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