ABSTRACT
Although Schubert has sometimes been excoriated for his treatment – or mistreatment – of Heine in Schwanengesang, notably by Stein, he has also been bravely defended, recently by Richard Kramer. Stein leads us in a fruitful direction when he points out that the design of the song can be considered as 'a slightly varied strophic form, each musical strophe incorporating two of the poem's stanzas, so that there is just one musical repetition.' The binary division of the music, in accordance with its quasi-strophic period, thus neatly groups the poetic stanzas in pairs – too neatly according to Stein, for whom the pattern 'negates the main effect of the poem'. In the present instance the medium is not purely musical; the interpretation of its formal organization must recognize poetic and dramatic elements as well. The postlude receives and assimilates all that has occurred, whether musically or dramatically.
