Schubert through a Neo-Riemannian Lens

Abstract Franz Schubert’s ‘Schwanengesang’ (‘Wie klag’ ich’s aus’), D744, sets a poem by Johann Chrysostomus Senn (1795–1857) that begins with a swan song and ends with a narrator’s commentary. The inherent Volkslied quality of Senn’s highly regular strophic poem was recast by Schubert into a modified strophic setting, within which the swan song itself—the song within a song—is a highly modulatory, through-composed structure. These constant modulations aptly capture the swan’s gradual metamorphosis. I argue that scrutinising Schubert’s modulatory strategy through a neo-Riemannian lens has profound theoretical and aesthetic implications. I contend that Schubert’s propensity to colour repeated tones in the vocal line with different harmonies in the accompaniment led him not only to intuit the contents of the PLR neo-Riemannian cycle of the ‘chicken-wire’ Tonnetz, but also to transform the role of the accompaniment from its deliberately superfluous function within the Volkslied aesthetic into a vital vehicle of musical meaning.