Schubert - The Crow

Last week I started with the 5th Symphony by Sibelius, music written on a massive scale and which is almost overwhelming in its power, some would even say that it's so full-on that it fails, and leaves them feeling a bit cold. Fair enough, though you are of course wrong. Today something entirely different, yet I'd argue it's no less powerful. The 16 Whooper Swans that Sibelius wrote about was based on a direct experience with nature in the great big outdoors, but the Crow in this song by Schubert is all about the mythology and folklore of birds. It's not about documenting the reality of nature, but it's about a specific human interpretation of the behaviour or character of a bird based on a tiny bit of fact and a huge amount of fanciful nonsense.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) wrote his song cycle Die Winterreise (The Winter Journey) a year before he died, and a rough outline is that through 24 songs using text by the German poet Wilhelm Müller, it tells the story of a heartbroken poet wandering through the winter streets, taking weird delight in various things, ranging from the totally banal to the fantastical and terrifying. It's impossible to not read it as autobiographical, as Schubert seemed to be aware that he was rapidly approaching an unjustly young death - he'd contracted syphilis in 1822, presumably from a prostitute.

The 15th song is Die Krähe (The Crow), and here Schubert's tapping into the popular mythology of the generic black bird of death, this 'Crow' could even be a Raven. Sinister black birds pop up in folklore throughout the world, and they never get good press - they're always viewed as the souls of the damned, or the wandering victims of unsolved murders, and so on. No Romantic poet wrecked on opium ever wrote an ode to a crow. (let's get googling to prove Tom wrong)

Mark Cocker in his brilliant Birds Britannica puts it like this: "In modern Britain and Ireland the crow is the classic symbol of evil and a portent of misfortune ... In television programmes and Hollywood films, crows are a stereotypical motif - often a silhouette image on a bare stump - to convey danger, death, murder, evil, even specifically the Devil."

Have a listen a couple of times, the text and translation is below, and then I've got my own take on this song, because I don't actually think it's as bleak and desperate as it might first appear. I reckon there's a bit of dark humour threaded through this. I particularly like this video because the tenor Ian Bostridge looks as if he's been pinned down like a butterfly specimen, or maybe he's a drunken fruit bat? Either way, his singing and characterisation is incredible.

Now think about this - the moral of the song is that loneliness is no way to spend your life. No, it's better to have just one real friend, one who's there by your side right up until your final breath, even if that one friend is only hanging around with you in order to rip off your eyelids as soon as you hit the deck.

And that's funny, yes? Maybe not fall-on-the-floor-and-foul-yourself hilarious, but Schubert must have had a bit of a laugh to himself when he was setting the poem to music.

Birds are mentioned in two other songs in Winterreise. In number 8, Backwards Glance, a lark and Nightingale are mentioned singing in rivalry. And in number 11, Dreams of Spring, he remembers the time he fell in love in springtime, singing of birdsong, flowers and meadows, and then it all goes wrong and he wakes up to the sound of a Raven screaming on his rooftop. Full text and translations are here.

If you never have, then do yourself a favour and treat yourself to a complete listen to all of Winterreise. Trust me, it's worth it.