# What piece perfectly fits the term "Weltschmerz"?



## nicolaxao (Sep 25, 2018)

For me it would be Beethoven String Quartet 15, for you?


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## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

Mahler Symphony No. 4, if I understand the meaning of the word correctly.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Brahms!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

"Weltschmerz" is the melancholy of one who has come to realize that the reality of the world must always fall far short of our hopes for it. I hear it in the late works of many composers, especially of the Romantic era. Schubert, Brahms, Wagner, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius and Rachmaninoff come to mind. Mahler rolls around in it like a pig in the mud.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> "Weltschmerz" is the melancholy of one who has come to realize that the reality of the world *must* always fall far short of our hopes for it. I hear it in the late works of many composers, especially of the Romantic era. Schubert, Brahms, Wagner, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius and Rachmaninoff come to mind. Mahler rolls around in it like a pig in the mud.


Must? Not 'does' always fall short? Or 'has fallen short up to now'? Is it really that pessimistic?

If so, I know it well.



Woodduck said:


> Mahler rolls around in it like a pig in the mud.


I wanted to say this, but I've had my quota of Mahler complaints this month (and squandered the rest on Schubert).


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## jdec (Mar 23, 2013)

eugeneonagain said:


> I wanted to say this, but I've had my quota of Mahler complaints this month (and squandered the rest on Schubert).


What about Wagner now? I know you have your complains there too! You would just need to be prepared for an imminent counterattack from Mr. Woodduck


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

jdec said:


> What about Wagner now? I know you have your complains there too! You would just need to be prepared for an imminent counterattack from Mr. Woodduck


Ha ha. Wagner knows Weltzschmerz very well, but rolling around is not his style. When the world gets him down he takes a trip to Valhalla or Montsalvat.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

jdec said:


> What about Wagner now? I know you have your complains there too! You would just need to be prepared for an imminent counterattack from Mr. Woodduck


I am a reformed character with regard to Wagner. I admitted my errors.

Would it be right to say that much of the romantic period was about 'weltschmerz'?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

eugeneonagain said:


> I am a reformed character with regard to Wagner. I admitted my errors.
> 
> Would it be right to say that much of the romantic period was about 'weltschmerz'?


More so, I think, as the century wore on, but there was always that vein of "paradise lost" and the search for the ethereal blue flower that was doomed to remain a dream.


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## jdec (Mar 23, 2013)

eugeneonagain said:


> I am a reformed character with regard to Wagner. I admitted my errors.


Great, you already got Liszt too, if I'm not mistaken. Then I think there is some hope for future reformation too with regard to Mahler and Schubert. I would not be surprised


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Walter Niemann, Brahms' biographer, calls Brahms "The modern master of Weltschmertz in music". He illustrates his point by citing the beautiful Alto Rhapsody, set to three stanzas of Goethe's poem 'Harzreise im Winter'. Perhaps an even better example is Brahms' 'Im Herbst' [In Autumn] from the 5 Gesänge, Op. 104.






German text

1. Ernst ist der Herbst.
Und wenn die Blätter fallen,
sinkt auch das Herz zu trübem Weh herab.
Still ist die Flur,
und nach dem Süden wallen
die Sänger stumm, wie nach dem Grab.

2. Bleich ist der Tag,
und blasse Nebel schleiern
die Sonne wie die Herzen ein.
Früh kommt die Nacht:
denn alle Kräfte feiern,
und tief verschlossen ruht das Sein.

3. Sanft wird der Mensch.
Er sieht die Sonne sinken,
er ahnt des Lebens wie des Jahres Schluß.
Feucht wird das Aug',
doch in der Träne Blinken 
entströmt des Herzens seligster Erguß.

English translation

1. Autumn is sad.
And when the leaves are falling,
sinks too the heart in troubled grief to lave.
Still is the field,
and flown to Southwinds calling,
are songsters, still, as to the grave.

2. Drear is the day,
and pallid clouds are veiling,
the sunlight as the spirit free.
Soon comes the night:
then rest all powers empaling,
oblivion falls on all that be.

3. Tender grows man.
He sees the sun declining,
divines that life too as the year, must close.
Moist are the eyes
but thro' the teardrops shining,
outflows the heart and holiest solace knows.


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## jdec (Mar 23, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Ha ha. Wagner knows Weltzschmerz very well, but rolling around is not his style.


I know, too bad, I LOVE the feel of Weltzschmerz.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

jdec said:


> I know, too bad, I LOVE the feel of Weltzschmerz.


"I love the smell of weltzschmerz in the morning." --Robert Duvall

BTW is there another word with seven consonants in a row?

BTW again, it's only six consonants. Weltschmerz has no "z".


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)




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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

Deep melancholy or creeping depression, refusal to live, tendency to abandon the world, etc... This is the meaning of this word. And the composer who has invented it has one and only name: Franz Schubert. Very close to him the Hugo Wolf, who leaved his life naked in cold asylums...


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## jdec (Mar 23, 2013)

KenOC said:


> "I love the smell of weltzschmerz in the morning." --Robert Duvall


Kind of...


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Dimace said:


> Deep melancholy or creeping depression, refusal to live, tendency to abandon the world, etc... This is the meaning of this word. And the composer who has invented it has one and only name: Franz Schubert. Very close to him the Hugo Wolf, who leaved his life naked in cold asylums...


I believe you are right. We first hear it in Schubert, and it's what makes him powerful even when his music's apparent simplicity might lead us to underestimate him. I did so for years.


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

What's already been said about Mahler, I guess.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Weltschmerz is one of those funny German words - Weltschmerz, Schadenfreude, Lebensmüde, Schweinehund .... I studied an Austrian middle school (Gymnasium) and the German literature teacher claimed, that the German culture in the 19th century was extremely negativistic. Basically, the only positive writer was Goethe, the rest were people like Nietzsche, Schoppenhauer, Wagner. Wagner with his Götterdämmerung foreshadowed WW2.

Concerning composers, the word Weltschmerz fits to Mahler imho. I find Mahler bordering on pathos and melodramatism, navel gazing, negativity, depression, pathological introspection. Schubert? His music can be sad (Winterreise)


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Jacck said:


> Weltschmerz is one of those funny German words - Weltschmerz, Schadenfreude, Lebensmüde, Schweinehund .... I studied an Austrian middle school (Gymnasium) and the German literature teacher claimed, that the German culture in the 19th century was extremely negativistic. Basically, the only positive writer was Goethe, the rest were people like Nietzsche, Schoppenhauer, Wagner. Wagner with his *Götterdämmerung foreshadowed WW2*.
> 
> Concerning composers, the word Weltschmerz fits to Mahler imho. I find Mahler bordering on pathos and *melodramatism,* navel gazing, negativity, depression, pathological introspection. Schubert? His music can be sad (Winterreise)


"Melodramatism"... Nice coinage. My spell check doesn't like it, but I do.

How does _Gotterdammerung_ foreshadow WW II? The _Ring_ is not about war, but Wotan certainly had a terminal case of _Weltschmerz._


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## jdec (Mar 23, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> How does _Gotterdammerung_ foreshadow WW II?


The hero Siegfried, betrayed by those around him, loses the Ring and winds up on a funeral pyre while the fortress of Valhalla burns and the kingdom of the gods is destroyed.

This essentially was the ending Hitler inflicted upon himself, his people and his Reich.

:lol:


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

I suspect Beethoven knew the feeling. Weltschmerz. Though often his great works end with positive, uplifting, major key finales (one thinks of the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies offhand, as well as several of the chamber works), there is much melancholy to get there.

The greatest example seems to me to be the final String Quartet, where Beethoven wrestles once again with Weltschmerz for three powerful movements only to finally resign to laughter, the only buffer (not cure) against the melancholy of essential despair. Laughter, the saving grace against the madness that grows naturally from the human consciousness of irrevocable annihilation.

So much of our modern absurdist and dadist art provides a similar buffer, so perhaps we can look for Weltschmerz in much of contemporary music, within those squawks, booms, whistles, clangs, and moments of intensely quiet or even silent ruminations that color so much of our present day sound art.


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## jdec (Mar 23, 2013)

Larkenfield said:


> Brahms!


Actually I was going to mention the beautiful Op. 116 - 4. Intermezzo In E too, but I noticed it's already included in this video. Yes, this music is perfectly "Weltschmerz" to me.


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## jdec (Mar 23, 2013)

This one which I love, for some reason also fits the term to me:


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> I believe you are right. We first hear it in Schubert, and it's what makes him powerful even when his *music's apparent simplicity* might lead us to underestimate him. I did so for years.


Take out his sonatas (and less his symphonies) and I agree with you, my friend. But his FFFF sonatas, are so FFFF complex, that this moment I find no words to describe them. They look like a Gordian Knot which no one should allow to resolve with a sword but only with deep though and deepest feelings. A hell of the difficulty, and a main reason for a failure in Wien Conservatory for the students play for their diploma. Also, very much avoided in master classes worldwide, for students and professors. He and Beethoven the sonata composers I love and hate eminently.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

In the post-Romantic era I would say that a number of Shostakovich's later works sound as if he's had enough.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Maybe young Alexander felt a bit of that when he composed his Etude Op. 2 No. 1?





How a 15 year old could create this is still a mystery to me. 
What was I doing again when I was 15? Nothing useful, or artful. The usual stuff for a kid that age, playing on my Nintendo probably. Destined for a life of mediocrity. I think I'm feeling a little weltschmerz myself now.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

elgars ghost said:


> In the post-Romantic era I would say that a number of Shostakovich's later works sound as if he's had enough.


Enough, or too much. _Weltschmerz_ isn't bleak, black, hopeless depression. If it is, I'd better start writing my will.


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> Enough, or too much. _Weltschmerz_ isn't bleak, black, hopeless depression. If it is, I'd better start writing my will.


The glorious end of our glorious conversation about depression in a musical forum... :lol:


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