RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Invoking Unheard Melodies: Rellstab’s Lyrics to Schubert’s “Serenade”
JF Monatshefte
FD University of Wisconsin Press
SP 479
OP 490
DO 10.3368/m.111.4.479
VO 111
IS 4
A1 Rudolph Glitz
YR 2019
UL http://mon.uwpress.org/content/111/4/479.abstract
AB In this article, Ludwig Rellstab’s “Ständchen” or “Serenade” (1827), the poem set to music by Franz Schubert and included in the posthumous Schwanengesang collection (D 957), is a) translated with an emphasis on verbal and syntactical accuracy and b) interpreted in more detail than usual. The various interpretations offered range from a straightforward conventional reading that presumes a standard serenading situation over a more elusive one in which the melodies invoked by the speaker remain unheard in any literal sense to, finally, a “supernatural” one, in which the song as adapted and appropriated by Schubert takes the form of a communication from the afterlife. (RG)