BEETHOVEN’S BLUE REMEMBERED HILLS

Chris Walton

doi:10.5937/newso2260221W

Chris Walton Africa Open Institute, University of Stellenbosch, Bern University of the Arts

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5937/newso2260221W

Keywords: An die ferne Geliebte, Song cycle, Monotone, Ludwig van Beethoven, Arthur Somervell

Abstract

Various commentators have noted Beethoven’s use of a monotone in the second song of his cycle An die ferne Geliebte, where the repetition of a single note serves to conjure up the power of memory. This monotone served as a model for several subsequent composers of song cycles, often in a similar context when their singer/narrator recalls things that are past – from Peter Cornelius to Arnold Bax and Othmar Schoeck. In the case of Arthur Somervell’s A Shropshire Lad, a further correlation is found between his poet’s “blue-remembered hills” and Beethoven’s “Berge so blau”.

Author Biography

Chris Walton, Africa Open Institute, University of Stellenbosch, Bern University of the Arts

Chris Walton, PhD, studied at Cambridge, took his doctorate at Oxford, and was a Humboldt postdoc fellow at Munich University. He ran the Music Division of the Zurich Central Library from 1990 to 2001, then was appointed Professor and Head of Music Department at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Today he is an honorary professor at Africa Open Institute, University of Stellenbosch, and currently heads a research project at the Bern University of the Arts. He has written several books and numerous articles on Austro-German music from Richard Wagner to Alban Berg.