When you’re young, oregon not truthful young, and powerfully drawn to a genre of music, a definite composer, a peculiar piece, it’s often hard to explicate why, adjacent to yourself. This whitethorn beryllium particularly existent of euphony unfamiliar to you. Music works powerfully connected a subliminal level. Sometimes we similar to support it that mode and not effort to relationship for however it speaks to us.
So it was with Marian Anderson’s lifelong emotion of Schubert’s songs. She was ne'er precise wide astir what gripped her, starting from the epiphany she had arsenic a young teen erstwhile she heard Roland Hayes sing Schubert songs successful a recital astatine her church; though she understood not a connection of the German texts, she was transfixed. Some 15 years later, her determination to survey Schubert lieder with adept teachers was successful ample portion what impelled her to spell to Europe.
During the premier years of her career, portion wide acknowledged arsenic an exceptional Schubert vocalist with impeccable German diction, Anderson inactive avoided expounding connected the music. When selecting songs for a recital program, she aboriginal explained, she ever looked archetypal to Schubert, “the composer I emotion best,” who wrote “hundreds of them,” each “more beauteous than the last.” But she near it astatine that and seldom said more. Schubert’s songs, she noted, “were rewarding for pianist and singer.” How so?
Beyond Schubert, Marian Anderson from aboriginal connected was captivated by classical euphony altogether, which acceptable her isolated from household members with constricted vulnerability to it. This was besides existent for me. Though I grew up successful a comfy Long Island suburb, cipher successful my household had immoderate existent appreciation of classical euphony until I came on and discovered it connected my own, particularly aft I started taking soft lessons astatine 8 years old, not done my parents’ suggestion, but astatine my ain insistence. I had nary thought what drew me. But it was contiguous and powerful.
Anderson affirms thing she demonstrated successful signifier passim her career—that nary songs by Schubert oregon Brahms are much sublime and profound than Negro spirituals.
During puerility days arsenic a subordinate of her religion choir, Anderson was profoundly affected by the euphony they sang, mostly acquainted hymns and spirituals, but also, connected occasion, classical choral works, including selections from Handel’s Messiah, and a showpiece question from Rossini’s Stabat Mater for which Marian was sometimes tapped to sing the solo. Her response, similar mine, seems to person been contiguous and powerful.
A centuries-long apparatus wrong the tract has enveloped classical euphony successful a mystique of superiority, presenting it arsenic cosmopolitan and timeless, the highest music, transcending nationality, race, and content systems. And successful aboriginal years, erstwhile Anderson tried to picture the genre to which she had devoted herself, which was not often, she could travel disconnected similar idiosyncratic who had bought into this mystique.
During her archetypal trips to Europe, it struck her that audiences determination were much musically educated than those astatine location and took euphony “more seriously,” she said successful a 1945 interview. “When 1 is superior by nature, 1 is moved by superior things,” she explained; successful a mode “light songs are a signifier of flattery” that “serve to enactment 1 successful a pleasant framework of mind.” But, Anderson noted, determination had been a large alteration successful the philharmonic sensation of American audiences during the past 20 years. “This was evident to anyone who sang for our boys successful the Army oregon for the warfare workers successful factories,” she said. “It would person seemed perfectly earthy had they demanded the lighter songs. Instead, it was not antithetic to find them requesting Brahms and Schubert.”
We should not work excessively overmuch into Anderson’s characterization of definite songs arsenic “lighter.” She was reasoning of precise fashionable fare and songs that appealed to the “bobbysoxer” crowd, arsenic she enactment it. Anderson came to cognize and respect Duke Ellington and recovered a person successful Alberta Hunter erstwhile they overlapped successful London. She was nary classical euphony snob. Still, she utilized immoderate questionable presumption during this interview. “Many vigor programs could supply euphony of a higher benignant and find much listeners,” Anderson said, but “too often those successful complaint consciousness that the programs indispensable beryllium brought ‘down’ alternatively than ‘up’ to the public.”
To beryllium fair, successful utilizing words similar “higher” and “up” she astir apt conscionable meant that creation songs and classical euphony mightiness initially onslaught galore listeners arsenic much challenging and “serious.” Yet, if programming were directed “up,” the nationalist would respond and travel to emotion this euphony too. And, she added: “I bash not person to archer you that I dearly emotion the Negro spirituals. They are the unburdenings of the sorrows of an full contention which, uncovering scant happiness connected earth, turns to the aboriginal for its joys.” Once again with these words Anderson affirms thing she demonstrated successful signifier passim her career—that nary songs by Schubert oregon Brahms are much sublime and profound than Negro spirituals.
I cannot ideate that Anderson experienced Schubert songs and different “higher” German lieder arsenic superior oregon transcendent. More apt she was hooked by the subliminal stirrings and affectional undertow of the music. Somehow, beneath the aboveground of immoderate cheerful Schubert song, anxiousness and sadness look to beryllium churning. That dichotomy surely reflected, consciously oregon not connected Schubert’s part, the circumstances of his beingness and contradictions of his character.
Short, bespectacled, a small chubby, and craving fellowship, Schubert was beloved by a ellipse of antheral friends who thought they had an unheralded genius successful their midst. But helium struggled with his career, harbored doubts and torments, and died miserably astatine thirty-one. Young Marian Anderson whitethorn person been responding to these tensions successful the music. Rather than deterring her, the ambiguities made her privation to perceive and cognize more.
Anderson had been steeped successful philharmonic ambiguity done the Negro spirituals she grew up with. Ambiguity, subtext, treble meanings, and metaphor people done each of them. “Deep River, Lord, I privation to transverse implicit into campground,” Anderson sang erstwhile she made her precise archetypal workplace recording, expressing a longing for and certainty that a “gospel feast” awaits successful the “promised land” wherever “all is peace.” The aching world of beingness for oppressed Black radical is ne'er explicitly referred to. But it was nary gospel feast.
“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” a spiritual Anderson sang passim her life, has ambiguity written into the rising two-note motif that begins the melody, with the syllable “some” coming connected the downbeat, and “times” somewhat drawn out. In Anderson’s 1951 recording, she emphasizes this important detail, singing “SOME-times.”
This inflection suggests that determination are times erstwhile she doesn’t feel similar a motherless child. Though, sadly, Anderson became a fatherless child, she had a parent who adored her. But immoderate vocalist of this spiritual indispensable metaphorically convey what it feels similar to beryllium motherless, rootless, unprotected, vulnerable. The teenage Anderson indispensable person felt this mode erstwhile she was peremptorily denied an exertion signifier to a euphony schoolhouse successful Philadelphia, or, galore years later, erstwhile the Daughters of the American Revolution barred her from its signifier successful Washington, D.C., a Black creator who had performed earlier presidents and kings successful satellite capitals.
Looking back, likewise vague perceptions of ambiguity and symptom were astir apt what captivated maine astir Schubert’s songs erstwhile I was a teenager. I deliberation it was the summertime earlier my elder twelvemonth successful precocious schoolhouse when, astatine the urging of my soft teacher, I bought a two-disc signaling of Schubert’s opus rhythm Die schöne Müllerin (The Beautiful Maid of the Mill), performed by the German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and the English pianist Gerald Moore. At the clip I was a burgeoning pianist who intended to large successful euphony successful college, truthful I was acquainted with tons of classical repertory. But not this seminal Schubert work. Nor, really, with German lieder.
Was proceeding Roland Hayes and, successful time, different inspiring artists sing Schubert, Brahms, and Schumann songs similar being beckoned by a philharmonic brook to spot her instincts and travel its improbable path?
Of course, galore classical pieces I loved astatine the clip were affluent with ambiguities, similar Beethoven’s searching, majestic, and sometimes impish Fourth Piano Concerto, and Stravinsky’s austerely spiritual Symphony of Psalms. But that summer, listening to the signaling of this Schubert opus rhythm unsocial successful the finished basement of our home, I was utterly hooked and couldn’t recognize why. I had taken a twelvemonth of severely taught precocious schoolhouse German and, of course, the medium included the German texts—a acceptable of 20 poems by Wilhelm Müller—with English translations. So, I got the gist of the communicative the poems related, each 1 the first-person words and reflections of a restless young man, though important details are purposely vague.
A journeyman miller is wandering the countryside looking to prime up work. He hears a gurgling brook, which seems to beryllium beckoning him, and heads to it. Like immoderate quality boy, helium speaks to the brook, which directs him, oregon truthful helium thinks, to a beguiling mill amid a wood grove, wherever helium secures a occupation from the caput miller. The young antheral promptly develops a crush connected the miller’s beauteous daughter, though helium fears she is beyond him, a specified journeyman. He begins to deliberation that his feelings are reciprocated, which sends him into bursts of delirious joy. But his doubts linger, and helium soon realizes that she is infatuated with a dashing huntsman dressed successful green, the precise colour of a ribbon helium had fixed to the maiden. His fury devolves into despair and depression. In the past song, helium asks his affable brook to springiness him remainder beneath its waters and sing a lullaby arsenic helium dies. Does helium enactment connected this? It’s near unclear.
Though I recovered the miller’s atrocious communicative richly romantic, it was Schubert’s music, and the mode it melded with the words, that pulled maine in, close from the seemingly high-spirited opening song, “Das Wandern.” “To rotation is the miller’s delight,” the young antheral sings, adding that it’s a mediocre miller who doesn’t cognize the rewards of wandering. He likens himself to the brook, ever connected the move, time and night. This strophic opus successful 5 verses conveys the journeyman’s joyfulness done a jaunty, tuneful vocal enactment implicit a steadily striding soft accompaniment. The euphony is bustling and hearty, though excessively overmuch so. The heartiness verges connected bluster. Does the miller truly thrive connected wandering? What’s helium wandering from?
Sure enough, ambiguity permeates the 2nd song, which is titled with a question: “Wohin?” (Where To?) These subtle ambiguities are realized beautifully by Marian Anderson successful a splendid 1945 signaling of “Wohin?” with the pianist Franz Rupp. Die schöne Müllerin was conceived for a antheral dependable and the protagonist is simply a young man, truthful Anderson would not person contemplated performing the implicit cycle. But 2 of its songs became staples of her repertory, particularly this one.
Though helium doesn’t cognize what overcame him, arsenic the miller relates successful “Wohin?,” helium heard a babbling brook and felt compelled to spell to it. The soft portion gurgles similar the waters with a rippling right-hand fig successful sextuplets. The vocal enactment is tender, yet insistent and questioning. Anderson draws upon the lighter, luminous components of her dependable to suggest this young man’s intrigued yet confused state. Her singing is melting and susceptible yet charged with expectation. In important moments the euphony fleetingly becomes mysterious, adjacent ominous, with minor-key harmonies and a twisting vocal crook doubled by the bass enactment of the soft part. Only successful these passages does Anderson summon her deep, affluent contralto tones, though conscionable a touch—at the infinitesimal erstwhile the miller confides his befuddlement to the brook and asks, “Is this, then, my path?” He wonders if it whitethorn not beryllium babbling waters speaking to him, but stream nymphs (or darker earthy forces?) singing and dancing beneath the surface. Well, “let them sing,” helium says, and helium volition travel cheerfully (“fröhlich nach”), helium claims. But helium doesn’t look excessively cheerful successful Anderson’s account, arsenic the soft portion trails disconnected portion the vocal enactment lingers quizzically with a brushed sustained code connected the connection “nach.”
Though the signaling was made during Anderson’s mature prime, it’s casual to ideate that this opus spoke to the teen Marian. Was proceeding Roland Hayes and, successful time, different inspiring artists sing Schubert, Brahms, and Schumann songs similar being beckoned by a philharmonic brook to spot her instincts and travel its improbable path?
The different opus from Die schöne Müllerin that Anderson made her own, the seventh from the cycle, was “Ungeduld” (Impatience). Our protagonist has been crippled with doubts astir the miller’s girl and prone to affectional highs and lows. But successful this opus helium is riding an exuberant, manic high, burning with passion, convinced helium has recovered the emotion of his life. He wants to carve the quality upon each tree, sow it successful each angiosperm bed, susurration it successful each field. The vocal enactment unfolds successful breathless bursts of sputtered words and clipped melodic phrases, backed up by a soft portion with unceasing rhythmic triplets and bouncing chords. Each of the 4 verses ends with a full-voiced declaration, “Dein ist mein Herz” (“My bosom is yours”), with emphatic precocious notes connected the connection “Dein.”
Yet it’s clear, not conscionable from the substance but from Schubert’s music, that the miller has yet to talk these words straight to his beloved. Instead, helium calls upon intermediaries, similar a starling helium wants to bid to sing his words astatine her window. Is helium flushed with emotion oregon becoming delusional?
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From Voice of a Century: The Life and Artistry of Marian Anderson by Anthony Tommasini. Published by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2026 by Anthony Tommasini.
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