Gretchen am Spinnrade

Gretchen am Spinnrade (Gretchen at the spinning wheel) is a selection of text from Goethe's Faust. It was set to a singspiel by Schubert in 1814, Op.2, D.118, and was his first successful lied. A challenging work for both pianist and singer, Schubert's setting for soprano voice has been transposed for mezzo-soprano voice as well.

Analysis

This song has a ternary design of 3 stanzas plus 4 stanzas plus 3 stanzas. Each section is started with the first stanza of the poem, which helps to identify the beginning of each section. The setting of the opening stanza is strophic and it is the measurement of the dividing sections into groupings. Each stanza afterwards is through-composed.

Gretchen is singing at her spinning-wheel while thinking of Faust and all that he promises. The accompaniment mimics the spinning-wheel in constantly revolving sixteenth-note figurations in the right hand, the foot treadle back and forth in the left — speeding up and slowing down in response to the text, to show Gretchen's excitement or distraction. At the climax of the piece, the piano stops as Gretchen becomes overly distracted by the thought of Faust's kiss, and then only hesitatingly begins again as she realizes she has forgotten to keep spinning. Schubert ingeniously uses the piano to imitate the rhythmic repetition of the spinning wheel, perhaps mirroring either the hypnotic effect of temptation and the devil and/or love. The constancy of Gretchen's infatuation is alluded to not only by constancy of the spinning, but also by the repetition of the first stanza periodically throughout the song and the emphatic repetition of the final stanza three times.

Gretchen's beginning words (in German) are:

:Meine Ruh ist hin:Mein Herz ist schwer:Ich finde, ich finde sie nimmer:und nimmermehr

The alliteration and rhyming are incomparable. Loosely translated to English, this means:

:My reason (peace of mind) has fled:My heart is heavy:I think, I can never find you:and never will again...

Notable recordings

Notable recordings include those by
* Elly Ameling and Jörg Demus
* Elly Ameling and Dalton Baldwin
* Barbara Bonney and Geoffrey Parsons
* Janet Baker and Gerald Moore.
* Nina Hagen, Street CD, 1991, titled 'Gretchen'

Other notable recordings include those by Gundula Janowitz, Jessye Norman, Irmgard Seefried, Elisabeth Schumann, and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

External links

* [http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=17757 German text and English translation]
* [http://lottelehmann.org/llf/lehmann/bibliography/Tributefolder/Gretchen.html Recording by Jeannine Altmeier with with Val Underwood, piano]
*
* [http://www.mutopiaproject.org/cgibin/piece-info.cgi?id=503 Full score and MIDI file] at Mutopia