A striking contrast to the composition just described is afforded by the
equally able but intensely mournful transcription entitled “Gretchen am
Spinnrad.”
The text of this song is taken from Goethe’s “Faust.” It is the song of
Marguerite, sitting at her wheel, in the gathering dusk of evening,
spinning mechanically from the force of long habit, but with her
thoughts engrossed by memories of her lost happiness, her ruined life,
and blighted future. The mood is one of overwhelming melancholy, of
crushing despair, whose dark depths are fitfully stirred from time to
time by a rebellious surge of passionate but hopeless longing, as her
heart throbs to some passing recollection of departed joys and love’s
fateful delirium.
Her dashing but faithless lover, Faust, after winning and betraying her
affection, robbing her of the innocence and tranquil happiness of
girlhood, has abandoned her to face her bitter fate alone; and she moans
in her solitary anguish:
“My peace is gone, my heart oppressed,
And never again will my soul find rest.”
The music perfectly voices the piteous sadness of her mood, with the
occasional intermittent outbursts of passion; while the monotonous hum
of the spinning-wheel, literally imitated in the accompaniment, as in
every good spinning song, seems in this case to adapt itself to the song
of the maiden, to harmonize with its sadness, to take on a corresponding
melancholy, reflecting the emotions expressed in her voice and words, as
a stream reflects the somber cloud that shadows it—a good illustration
of that universal principle in art, which invests inanimate things with
a fancied sympathy with human experiences.
Nothing could be more complete or perfectly appropriate than the musical
treatment of this subject; but its unmitigated sadness probably prevents
its becoming a popular favorite; and its extreme, though not at first
apparent, difficulty places it beyond the reach of most amateur players.