Last night a friend and I went out to see a performance of Schubert’s Winterreise in its entirety. 24 Lieder about a lone traveler braving winter’s chill to escape a lost love wasn’t perhaps the most in tune with the balmy and pleasant outside, but it was a superb performance, in particular by tenor Gerald Seminatore who sang with poise and nuance.

Winterreise was completed in 1827, and like most older things it creates a bit of a headspin for my modern ears and cultural conditioning. I don’t spend a lot of time in the early 19th century sensibility, so there was a good bit of negotiation as to what felt right. The poetry relies heavily on nature analogies, as the hero finds in his travels objects in nature that reflect his internal turmoil, and combined with Schubert’s music makes for some truly powerful and touching moments.

Then, the more postmodern part of my brain summed up the entire piece as “man feels sorry for himself for 23 songs before falling in with a mendicant hurdy-gurdy player.” I suppose that no one generation has a corner on expressions of angst, and the fact that I recognized my own experiences in more than a few of the Lieder reaffirms that feeling alone and unloved is more or less part of the human condition. Sometimes angst is the order of the day, and sometimes it can be beautiful.