Follow the Lieder

By William Bender

SCHUBERT'S SONGS, A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY by DIETRICH FISCHER-DIESKAU Translated by KENNETH S. WHITTON 333 pages. Knopf. $12.50.

Dietrich sings lieder. Fischer is the Bach specialist. And Dieskau stars in opera. So goes the legend of the most subtle, intellectual and prolific baritone of the past 25 years. If there is a Kunstlied (art song) Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau has not recorded in that mellifluous, burnished voice, it is not worth the vinyl. He has of late taken up conducting, and his lyric versions of Schubert's Symphonies Nos. 5 and 8 ("Unfinished") can be found on an Angel LP. Yet Fischer-Dieskau has found the time and talent for a new career: literature. Last year he produced Wagner and Nietzsche, a lively account of the celebrated battle of composer and philosopher.

His latest work is a learned, immensely readable study of Schubert's life and songs. The volume grew out of a long article Fischer-Dieskau wrote for his three-volume, 29-LP collection of Schubert lieder issued by Deutsche Grammophon seven years ago. There is also a companion volume, the Fischer-Dieskau Book of Lieder (Knopf; $15), containing texts and new translations of the singer's favorite German songs.

Boozy Sessions. Schubert's Songs is not a how-to-do-it book, although musicians might profit from the author's insight. In discussing the song cycle Die Winterreise (Winter Journey), that stark "chain of variations on the theme of grief," the author notes a brightening of atmosphere brought about by a transition from the minor to major key. Singers beware, he warns: "Things seem less desperate--but Schubert is not finished yet. By reverting to the acerbity of the original minor mode during the postlude, he rules out any possibility of self-indulgence or sentimental self-pity."

Most of the current Schubert literature is based, as Fischer-Dieskau notes, on the documents unearthed and published in 1946 by the Austrian scholar Otto Erich Deutsch. Compared with the 1,500 letters of Beethoven that still exist, the Schubert documentation is woefully small. Use of the songs to fill in some of the "psychological gaps" is a potentially dangerous technique. Mozart, for example, produced joyous music in desperate circumstances. With Schubert, however, it seems an acceptable approach. Aside from his school teaching and boozy sessions in various Viennese inns, the composer had almost no life at all apart from his music. "He needed to imagine what he could not experience," says Fischer-Dieskau. "That is why he loved poets above all others." The popular image of Schubert is of a genial, easy-going sort who hardly realized his own worth. In fact, "the texts of his songs hint at the bitterness within him ... Sorrow and happiness, humility and arrogance, modesty and pride, contemplation and passion speak to us out of the music."

Schubert wrote 608 songs. He would dash them off on napkins or menus; when he was 18, he set five on Aug. 19, six on Aug. 25 and eight on Oct. 19. That kind of productivity has led some writers to deduce that the composer was something less than a craftsman who threw off the lieder without thought or revision. "One glance at the concise accuracy with which he put his intentions down should give the lie to such fantasies," writes his new champion. "It is true that the musical 'polishing,' which makes Beethoven's sketchbooks look like battlefields, was not Schubert's method." Obviously, "the work was al ready clearly conceived in his head."

The point is important to the author, who wants Schubert removed from the shadow of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven: "Those who deny him the role of in novator must be deaf to the futuristic chords which can be heard in the piano sonatas, the quartets, the String Quintet and in Die Winterreise. "

There are no straw men in this book -- and plenty of villains. Fischer-Dieskau recalls that the publisher Haslinger. when proffered the first group of songs from Die Winterreise, responded with a paltry one florin per song. He reminds the reader that none of Schubert's nine symphonies was published during his lifetime, and that the author of Faust reacted indifferently to the 70 songs Schubert made of his poems -- songs which propelled Goethe to a new prominence.

Perhaps the musician's short, bitter life could have gone no other way. As Fisch er-Dieskau concludes in this rich vol ume, Schubert's "industry and productivity would have driven 20 publishers to the brink of despair." The industry and productivity of his new and brilliant critic should drive music lovers to the bookstores.

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