Schubert's Winter JourneyGraphic cycle by Bodo Zapp
13.12.2024-23.03.2025 at Café and Liebertzimmer des Schaezlerpalais
... “I will play you a cycle of eerie songs; they have moved me more than other songs have,” Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828) is said to have said, according to the diary entries of Josef von Spaun, a close friend, when he recited Wilhelm Müller's poems, which he had set to music, to his circle of friends in the fall of 1827.
While Franz Schubert found support and recognition in his circle of friends, his longing for female love and tenderness, for familial warmth and security remained unfulfilled. He never got over the disappointment of an unhappy relationship.
The “Winterreise”, which was composed a year and a half before his death, provides an insight into the composer's psyche. The texts and music are artfully interwoven and are characterized by melancholy and deepest resignation.
The 24 songs describe the path of a wanderer fleeing from reality, ultimately from himself. The inhospitable, wintry landscape, deserted and frozen in ice and snow, corresponds to the protagonist's inner state.
Bodo Zapp has realized the songs as a graphic cycle. This is done in the form of collages, each of which is accompanied by the song text for better understanding. His own drawings are combined with quotations from art history, motifs from everyday life, frottages or distorted photographs. Schubert's portrait appears in transparent blue in the background of all the pictures, running through the work like “a blue thread”.
The overlapping scenes, which originate from different levels of meaning, convey the feelings and mood of the wanderer. The spectrum of emotions of the lonely man is expressed, whereby the songs are characterized by a heightening of farewell, the pain of love and hope, rebellion, anger, despair and finally a longing for death. The dramatic climax is formed by the painting “Der Leiermann”, a fiddling bone man who lures the wanderer.
We cordially invite you to the opening on Thursday, December 12, 2024, at 6 pm.
As part of the opening, tenor Manuel Ried will perform three selected songs. He will be accompanied by pianist Stephanie Knauer.
