Music in Motion, Motion in Music: Musical Forces in Die schöne Müllerin
Steve Larson’s theory of musical forces presents a way of talking about musical meaning by describing the forces that guide musical motion: gravity, magnetism, and inertia. While these musical forces have often been employed in the analysis of instrumental works, they are less frequently invoked in the analysis of vocal works. Yet the role of musical forces in texted music is remarkably complex: they interact with poetic emotions and affects, which we often describe in physical terms, in a variety of ways.
In this paper, I show how Larson’s theory of musical forces provides a particularly effective way of analyzing the relationship between motion and affect in music with text. As a case study, I choose two songs from Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin, a cycle whose poems show a preoccupation with motion. Larson’s theory provides a way of delving more deeply into the topic. Scholars such as Susan Youens, Arnold Feil, and Stephen Rodgers have commented to some degree on motion’s role in the cycle, but the link between poetic and musical representations of motion and emotion remains under-explored. In analyses of two representative songs—“Das Wandern” and “Ungeduld,”—I reveal the specific means by which the underlying musical motion of Schubert’s music, governed by Larson’s forces, reinforces the emotions or affects represented (or implied) by Müller’s text: the feeling of walking in circles, shaped by gravity and inertia, in “Das Wandern,” and of desperate overreaching in defiance of gravity and magnetism in “Ungeduld.”
Together, these analyses show that the study of musical forces can profoundly enrich our understanding of the relationship between music and poetry. The nature of this relationship undoubtedly varies by piece and composer; for that reason alone, it is worthy of additional study.
Steve Larson’s theory of musical forces presents a way of talking about musical meaning by describing the forces that guide musical motion: gravity, magnetism, and inertia. While these musical forces have often been employed in the analysis of instrumental works, they are less frequently invoked in the analysis of vocal works. Yet the role of musical forces in texted music is remarkably complex: they interact with poetic emotions and affects, which we often describe in physical terms, in a variety of ways.
In this paper, I show how Larson’s theory of musical forces provides a particularly effective way of analyzing the relationship between motion and affect in music with text. As a case study, I choose two songs from Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin, a cycle whose poems show a preoccupation with motion. Larson’s theory provides a way of delving more deeply into the topic. Scholars such as Susan Youens, Arnold Feil, and Stephen Rodgers have commented to some degree on motion’s role in the cycle, but the link between poetic and musical representations of motion and emotion remains under-explored. In analyses of two representative songs—“Das Wandern” and “Ungeduld,”—I reveal the specific means by which the underlying musical motion of Schubert’s music, governed by Larson’s forces, reinforces the emotions or affects represented (or implied) by Müller’s text: the feeling of walking in circles, shaped by gravity and inertia, in “Das Wandern,” and of desperate overreaching in defiance of gravity and magnetism in “Ungeduld.”
Together, these analyses show that the study of musical forces can profoundly enrich our understanding of the relationship between music and poetry. The nature of this relationship undoubtedly varies by piece and composer; for that reason alone, it is worthy of additional study.