"Die Lorelei": A Musical Representation of Depression

For composer Clara Schumann, a life-long internal battle raged that tore her between raising her family and composing music. Constantly self-critical of her own work, she personally saw the feminine in her music as weak. In June of 1843 Clara’s husband Robert wrote in their marriage diary:

On my 33^rd birthday, June 8, Klara, as always, bestowed gifts upon me. The reason for her melancholy that I notice these days is unknown to me; she would like to heap gifts for those that belong to her; yet there is no luck that would be complete, and we shall accept our possessions with gratitude: talent, health, thriving children, a warm affection. [1]

Robert’s inability to recognize Clara’s melancholy as a possible mental health issue is not uncommon for most people of this time. Coincidently, the study of modern medicine was just being established and was in its infancy during this period of advancement in the nineteenth century. With little known about the anatomy of the human brain or what causes psychological disorder, the term ‘melancholia’ was used to describe the condition of any person displaying a mental anomaly. However, eight weeks prior to Robert’s journal entry, Clara had given birth to the couple’s second daughter. The short timeframe between these two events suggests that Clara had been suffering from Postpartum Depression (PPD). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 9 women experience symptoms of PPD and up to 1 in 5 mothers experience full-blown PPD. [2]

As gender binarism was the societal normality, the medical world abided to a vast difference in how woman were examined and diagnosed compared to men. At this time, “when the hysterical woman became sick, she no longer played the role of the self-sacrificing daughter or wife,” which caused doctors to find “hysterical patients [women] personally and morally repulsive, idle, intractable, and manipulative.” [3] As seen in the journal entry, Robert misconstrued Clara’s possible mental health disorder as a lack of gratitude for her talent, health, and children. Furthermore, several years later when Robert became too mentally ill to function normally in society, he was committed to a mental health institution without doctors or Clara questioning the validity of his mental illness.

Regarding the shaming misdiagnosis of Clara’s possible PPD, her true emotions likely emerged in a composition she had written for Robert’s birthday in 1843. One of the “bestowed gifts” of which Robert wrote in the aforementioned quote was Clara’s “Die Lorelei.” Any indication of how Clara fared psychologically during the composition of “Die Lorelei” is possibly related to the 1903 publication of Musica in which French stage actress Mlle Toutain wrote, “The receptive nature of the woman, her capacity to feel very deeply and very quickly the slightest things, her gifts of assimilation prove the woman as a being particularly able to seize and render the beauty of forms and sounds”. [4] Although this may relate to Clara’s writing of “Die Lorelei”, she struggled to see beauty in her music.

Musically, a woman’s ability or inability to feel and then to conjure those emotions into a piece of art will undoubtedly be influenced by the society and time in which she lives. During the life of Clara Schumann, “[A] woman’s life revolves around repetition, and thereby cyclic organization of time is commonly attached to femininity in various historical and cultural contexts, such as nineteenth-century music.” [5] “Die Lorelei” is fueled by a forward-moving ostinato bassline built on the fifth of the tonic chord G-minor. The instability of the fifth in the bass on an unrelenting ostinato suggests a frustration of living through the daily expectations as a woman during the nineteenth century. Raised as house maidens with a daily schedule, it was difficult for women to express themselves without falling back on their upbringing. Clara constructs the majority of her composition in a cyclic manner that suggests her inability to escape depression while remaining true to the scheduled mentality ingrained in her psyche.

Another manner in which a depressive state can be personified is through unsettling speech and thought such as the violent staccato recitative of “Die Lorelei.” Through the syllabic style of singing, Schumann creates a strong sense of discomfort in the first several bars of the lyrical melody. An example of this would be the intervallic movement in the first three notes sung: perfect fourth to major second, followed by a minor second. This pattern continues and the first consonant interval in the melody is not until measure 9. Then after a long awaited consonant tone, Schumann follows with another string of falling dissonances comparative to the inability to escape the troubles of depression.

Accompanying the choice of harmonies throughout “Die Lorelei” is the tempo at which the music is to be played: Schnell. This fast tempo supports the theory of Schumann’s rapid pace of thought filled with conflicting emotions of depression. As part of historical tradition, “Most women’s songs…are sung in a manner…more softly and at a leisurely tempo that allows the melodic line to be ‘decorated’ with delicate melismas.” [6] “Die Lorelei” lacks the built-in room for beautiful melodies or melismas that flatter the vocalist’s feminine ability. Clara’s stylistic decision to compose a piece for a female vocalist that is with a fast tempo and dissonant intervals is better representative of rapid thought, confusion, and angst, instead of the expected presentation of the feminine within this era of music.